1. From the "Title List", I clicked on "Endangered Species, 2004" for my choice of book. As an animal enthusiast, this topic is very dear to my heart. When the title opened, I noticed an option to choose a volume, from the book, which gave the choices of: (1) mammals; (2) arachnids, birds, crustaceans, insects, mollusks; (3) amphibians,fish, plants, reptiles. The animal of my choice was the Bactrian Camel.
The things I noticed while searching for an article is there are a few ways of accessing any article, using the toolbar that is just above the topic overview. One has the options of printing, emailing, downloading, listening, downloading mp3, or downloading a pdf to an eReader. There is also a tab that allows for translations, if need be. If I were to prepare a presentation on the Bactrian Camel, in order for more of my community to be aware of their endangered status, I'd be able to create a nice PowerPoint piece, given all of the choices available.
2. At the top of the page, type a search term in the search box. Search for answers to the two questions posed at the beginning of the post: zinc or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn if you can't think of something else. Review the results, selecting an article to see what kind of information you can find. Test the "Listen" feature. Discuss your results.
With my first search term, "What causes Rheumatoid Arthritis?", there was a total of one result, but it was a good one. It wasn't as case specific, as the resulting volume covered several types of arthritis. The information I found was helpful enough that I've saved the article, for future reference. Being able to save it will be such a time saver in the future, when I want to re-read it.
My second search term, "literary criticism of Huckleberry Finn", must have been too vague, as this is the message I got -
Your library's collection of 94,047 documents were searched and no results matching your search term(s) were found.
Please check your spelling or try other search term(s).
Revise Search
So, I tried again, using the Revise Search option. I searched for "literary criticism" and found 25 results. From these choices, I was able to narrow down the search, using the menu on the left of the screen. Here I was able to choose from several keywords that allows the user to limit the search to document type, publication title, subjects, publication languages and even with images. The user can also sort by relevence within the confines of the search.
3. Look at 2 or 3 other participants' blogs to see what they discovered. Comment if you like.
Hi, Tatted! I love your description of the features and yes, you would be able to create a good PowerPoint piece using GVRL! I think a little practice searching in here will convince you that this is a great place for research! Searching for "rheumatoid arthritis" got me 400-some results. Then I search "cause" within those results and got 392 results. For #2, try searching "huckleberry finn" and narrowing by document type on the left. I get 30 critical essays. Thanks for digging in here and for your comments.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Jane, for the great tips! I'll try that with the Huck Finn. I'm learning that a lot of success in the research goes hand in hand with the search terms. :)
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