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Worldcat - searches many kinds of libraries

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Worldcat - searches many kinds of libraries

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Open content

Find open access materials for research and study.
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Genealogy

WorldCat.org and genealogy: a powerful combination
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How to use WorldCat.org

Welcome to WorldCat.org

Get started with WorldCat.org. In about two minutes, you can learn how to make a WorldCat.org profile, create and add items to lists, export citations, and use facets to narrow your search criteria. It's a quick way to introduce yourself to the basics of searching the world's largest collection of information about materials in libraries.
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Use WorldCat.org for school research

Learn additional basic and advanced search techniques in this simple tutorial. We'll walk through how to get resources for a solar system report that a younger student (maybe working with a parent or teacher) might be assigned and provide tips for college students and more advanced researchers.
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Genealogy

If you're interested in genealogy or family history, you're in the right place. Libraries and archives are often the only source for unique, local information about cemetery, burial, and military records; family Bibles, church, and town histories; indexes of births, marriages, and deaths; photographs, newspapers, microfilm; and so much more.
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Explore resources in libraries worldwide

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WorldCat.org is a global catalog of library materials. You can search for books, music, video, articles and much more at libraries near you.

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I'll be redoing this, but I try to include search info, etc:

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MTechman: Example of weekly info shared with faculty

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I'm going to start this again in the fall. I'll probably change the name and make it biweekly :) Here's an example from Fall 2014. If you want me to put you on the list, please email me! I called it "Cool Stuff I Saw This Week" and I sent it to my faculty ITFs and all the media specialists.

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Open a new window and click Google image search, then click the camera icon. Click the image below, then drag it into the Google image search.

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After you drag and drop an image into Google image search.

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Did you know that when Search-by-Image doesn't work out so well, you can add in a keyword or two and help it out? Here's a demonstration of this using a picture I took of a caterpillar I found wandering around outside.

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Doodles are great lesson starters. See also the search info link.

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Download The Google Search App and get the best answers and assistance using voice search. Available on Android and iPhone. Get the mobile app today.

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Richard Byrne discusses practicing search skills. Try also (all grades) posting 3 or 4 images connected to curriculum on a Padlet and have students generate keywords.

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Over the last month I've shown the picture that you see to the left during a number of presentations and workshops. I've used the picture to model using pictures to spark students' minds at the beginning of lessons on search strategies. This is a strategy that I've developed by borrowing ideas from Daniel Russell's Search ReSearch activities and Dan Meyer's strategy of using videos and pictures to prompt students to ask math questions.

When I show the picture to the left during my workshops (click it to enlarge it and feel to use it yourself) I simply ask people to share the questions that come to mind when they see it. Then I give people time to try to use various Google search strategies to find the answers to their questions. Sometimes people find the answers and other times they don't. It's okay if they don't find the answers because the point is to try a variety of search strategies.
Some of the questions that are frequently asked about the picture are:
Where was this picture taken?
How big is the truck?
How much fuel does the truck consume?
How big are the tires?

All four of the questions above can be answered by using various search strategies and tools. Using the "similar images search" in Google Images will help you answer these questions. Google Maps Street View will help you answer the questions too. And while not essential to answering the questions, refining your search to a specific top-level domain could help too.

Create your own image-based search lessons.
Besides taking your own pictures and putting them online, a good strategy is to use Creative Commons-licensed images from Flickr. I recommend Flickr because many of the images are tagged with locations and some have captions that can give your students a few clues to work with. Fotopedia is also a good place to find Creative Commons-licensed images that have location tags.

For pre-made search lesson activities, take a look at the Google Search Education page.

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Using Images as Research Prompts to Teach Google Search Strategies

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Over the last month I've shown the picture that you see to the left during a number of presentations and workshops. I've used the picture to model using pictures to spark students' minds at the beginning of lessons on search strategies.

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His blog extends my thinking. Read the comments in this post, many ideas we can use with secondary students.

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I have to admit, I'm asking you now partly because I have the time this week, but also because (full disclosure) This week, a conversation...
Now that I'm not traveling, I have the chance to do something I've wanted to do for a while, and that is the chance to have a conversation with you about some parts of YOUR SearchResearch talents.
I'm guessing that if you're reading this, you're probably one of those people who likes to look things up--that is, you're a researcher by habit or training... at least you're a researcher by inclination!

You might spend time in the library, or you might spend time reading old maps in the archives, perhaps you spend lots of time with Google.
But what I'm curious about is this:

1. What do you do when you need to learn about a topic area very quickly? But I'm always curious about how people organize their self-teaching / self-learning behaviors.
I'm giving a talk on this in a couple of weeks at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Philadelphia. Here's an example of what I mean:
___________________________

Method #1: Look for groups of people interested in your topic

As I've pointed out before (takes me to the you can easily find more Pintrest boards (including some remarkable tattoos of card catalogs!), and--naturally-- SRS post on "finding the date of a globe"), the internet is remarkable for any number of reasons, but one that I rely on to learn about a topic quickly is that for any topic, there is a special interest group.
For instance, if I'm interested in those wonderful old oak library card catalogs, I can pretty easily find a group that's interested in them (by which I mean that they know a great deal about them, they probably collect them, they know the history of the catalogs, etc.)
One easy way to find such a group is by looking for people who have these things for sale. Thus:
[ library card catalog sale ]
Etsy shopping space for card catalogs, a Pintrest board for them, a nice blog post, and so on.
Or, by searching for blogs with:
[ library card catalog blog ]
a blog post from the Library of Congress.
And if you want to dig into a particular set of blogs, you might try:
[ library card catalog site:blogspot.com ]
and find even more blogs on the topic.

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Search Challenge (5/20/15): This week, a conversation about learning rapidly

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I have to admit, I'm asking you now partly because I have the time this week, but also because (full disclosure) This week, a conversation... Now that I'm not traveling, I have the chance to do something I've wanted to do for a while, and that is the chance to have a conversation with you about some parts of YOUR SearchResearch talents.