OnLine Databases

This assignment was more fun than I imagined it would be. There was such an abundance of sites listed that I got a little carried away.


Phase #1: To advance my language skills: I signed up at Mango Languages. I'm working through the Italian segment. I like the slide show concept. Being able to see the spelling of a phrase while hearing it is a great way to reinforce learning the material. Some of the slides were silly. One of them was the repetition of a person's name... something to the effect of this is how a man would say Marco (not sure if this is the exact name used). One of the subsequent slides then asks what is the Italian and/or English for Marco. The level is really bare-bones beginner.

I am also investigating the French lesson format. I currently teach non-credit beginning and intermediate level French classes. It may be a good service to offer to newer students. I haven't yet figured out how to jump directly to a higher level. I have the impression that you have to ride the wave of working through the program. This will take some more investigation.

Phase #2: To be practical, I visited Kelly's Blue Book and the Auto Repair Reference Center. Both were relatively straight forward to use.

Phase #3: To see if I could find the plot of a novel that I had read years ago: I explored the Literature Resource Center. I was actually able to find out the storyline of Le Rouge et Le Noir, a novel by Stendhal... and also quite a bit about Stendhal himself. This site would have been a wonderful resource to have when I was in Grad School (Was it really eons ago?).

Phase #4: For fun, I visited NoveList. What a great site! I started by looking up an author. I found not only the title but also the ISBN numbers listed for the books! I've had problems finding ISBNs on the web for this author, so I was quite pleased to have a new place to look. The site also allowed me to read the first chapter of a book I'd not yet read. .., and will soon be putting on hold... unless I find there is a e-book copy available! I spent a lot of time clicking around on this site. The "What we're reading" links were also fun. I will be revisiting this site and mentioning it to any of our novel loving patrons who come in to pick up holds at the Circ desk.

Phase #5: To follow up on a favorite pass time: I tried to explore Kovel's. I was actually quite disappointed with this site. After going through the process of registering, all my searches resulted in a message explaining that searching is free but a fee is required to see the full text of some articles. I'm not sure that I will be going back to that site. I could have gotten better results using a search engine like Google. Maybe the e-zine, for which I am now subscribed will draw me back... maybe not.

E-Books: Part 2

My first go with E-books was far from satisfying. I felt so frustrated with the way the pages took so long to load. I was wondering if it was just a fluke, or was it related to my home computer system? Tonight I decided to give it another try, and am thrilled to report that I encountered none of the problems that I did with the first 2 E-books! It was a relaxing and enjoyable experience... A double bonus, in fact, because I selected a title that I'd been meaning to look for in the stacks for weeks. There I was, hours after the library had closed, accessing the book without even leaving my house!

E-books

I suppose that I should apologize for being a week behind the rest of the 23ers. I'm still moving forward and that is what counts. Our assignment for Thing 8 is to learn about downloadable audio & video available through the library system. I've decided to work with each part separately.

A few days ago I played with the E-book aspect on my home computer. I selected a book on Indian cooking: The Taste Divine. I impatiently tried to skip too far ahead and received an error message telling me to wait for the page to load before advancing. I waited a bit but nothing happened. I tried to get back into the book but it had timed out. I closed out completely and re-entered the on-line catalogue, selecting another book: Cooking the Indian Way. Once again I found that there was a real lag in the time it took to skip between pages. At one point the program must have frozen. I clicked on a link in the task pane (contents) and at least the moving circle appeared letting me know that something was happening. After waiting 4 minutes (I timed it) with nothing showing in the reading pane, I started clicking around in the left hand pane. This time the word, contents, did produce the table of contents in the reading pane. Determined not to be impatient, I plodded slowly forward but 2 pages later, I was back to the whirling blue circle and the empty reading pane. I closed out.

Despite the snail's pace of moving ahead, it was exciting to find and attempt to read a book on-line. I think I would use the service for non-fiction, or something that could be read in snippets. Trying to read through a whole novel from a desktop computer monitor would not be my cup of tea.