Back to the MARVELous Blog assignments, what will we discover this week? It looks like a have a choice. My options are Academic Search Complete ; Masterfile Premier ; MiddleSearch Plus or Primary Search. I’m sure that I will look at ALL of these, but for now, I look at Masterfile Premier.
First I take a few minutes to glance through and see what publications are available as resources. At this point, all I can say is “WOW”! Truly an amazing and broad range of resources in this database. There are both PDF and HTML formats of complete articles.
I stumble on a transcription of Ulysses S. Grant’s second inaugural address! Hmmm… I type Inaugural in the search bar. There are at least five pages of articles ranging from Jefferson Davis’ Inaugural Addressto Traces of Inaugural Life. I narrow my search using Primary Search Documents. Now my results are mostly United States Presidential Inaugural Addresses. A nice resource for the history buff in each of us!
Next, I move to EBSCO’s eBook Collection. Here I can browse by Category, view Highlighted books or investigate Featured eBooks. In the search bar I type in the word Hypnosis. There are 16 eBooks in my results. Clicking on several, I see information about each title, and “Most Relevant Pages From This eBook”. I find this helpful as a way to decide which books I want to look at further. Not quite as familiar as looking at the index when I hold a print book in my hand, but very helpful in this instance. I put a couple of eBooks in my folder, open my folder, and look at one as eBook Full Text. Opening one of these items, I am pleased to discover how user friendly the eBooks are. Using the Arrow I can flip through the pages, I am also able to type in a page number and jump directly to that page. Very nice!
The Blog directions tell me to search Constitution Day. This brings 16 results. Changing my search by adding quotation marks, I now have one result – Historical Dictionary of Taiwan (Republic of China). I’m guessing that this isn’t what the Blog Discovery is all about. I double check that I haven’t refined my search more than necessary, no, all is open and clear of restrictions. I’m not sure what I missed, but this didn’t seem to work as expected for this search.
Next I am told to use the Advanced Search feature and search for items about Western history. I type Nebraska in the search bar – at least five pages of results. On the Right side of the results page, I open the Category window. Here I narrow my search a bit – opting for only categories using the word History, Biography and Genealogy. Updating the search my results screen is down to only four items. This is much easier to scroll through, and use as recommendations for folks interested in Western history.
This is certainly another great resource, and I have only explored the tip of it!!!
Now I take a few minutes to see what others have discovered throughout our MARVELous blogging experience. It is certainly interesting to read other posts on the various discoveries we have all made. This has been a MARVEL-ous experience for sure!