ELM...New Tools for You! (Thing 17)

ELM (Electronic Library for Minnesota) breaks down barriers to information thanks to funding from our Minnesota legislators.

Balancing the wide-open free web with the invisibility of databases is the challenge with students. And, I imagine it is a challenge with high school students and even college students as much as it is a challenge with their introduction to them in junior high - perhaps in different ways.

Meshing together what is great in Web 2.0 with the productivity of database research, makes them more relevant to research in this era. And while I don't see a significant change to working with my beginning researchers, I can see myself taking advantage of these resources and helping teachers utilize them.



RSS Heaven
in just about all these databases...
Keeping up with current issues is a constant challenge, and RSS tools are up to this challenge. The RSS feeds and readers are one of my favorite Web 2.0 tools and search results feeding into my RSS reader are capeable of keeping me on the information edge with what is relevant with carefully crafted searches. More than tracking my personal interests, I can track the interests of colleagues to provide them with up to date inforamtion that they may not find the time to locate themselves.

One of the best things is the ability to gather results from multiple databases into one location through an RSS reader. I find this to be much more useful than creating the personal research homepages within individual databases.

Personal Research Homepages
While I didn't find the personal research homepages to be anything special at this point, I am intrigued by some of the advanced search features that are available with this individualized login. I used the "Visual Search" in Ebsco. It took some getting used to, but I think that I like the idea of seeing the results built within subject-heading strands.

While these ELM productivity tools, may not appeal to my personal work style, they may be appealing to many staff in my building. I can see a need to check back on these tools as they evolve with Web 2.0.