Lesson 10 / Wrap-up

I don't know that I had any really big "discoveries" with the Electronics Challenge this time since it was more of a review after doing the Basic Challenge last year.  (I think my favorite database to "play with" is the World Book Encyclopedia.)    Although my position at work is not one where I have a lot of direct contact with the public, hopefully I will be able to direct people who do ask for help to the usefulness of these databases and resources.

Lesson 9

1.  In Ancestry, I went to the Search drop-down list and then to the "Immigration and Travel" section to find the "Ship Pictures and Descriptions" collection.  From there I went to the "Passenger Ships and Images" section.  I typed Titanic and "sister ship" in the keyword search and got back 7 results.  The Titanic is one of those listed.  The information regarding the Titanic states that the Olympic was a sister ship.  Four of the six others are from the White Star Lines (the company that owned the Titanic).  In looking at the information for each of those four, I found information and a photo of the Olympic.  (The Britannic is described as "Quite similar to the Olympic and Titanic."  I cannot find that Ancestry says the Britannic is a sister ship to them; however, Wikipedia does make that statement.)

2.  I did a keyword search for Hindenburg dirigible in the Newspapers & Publications collection and got back 545 results, of which 539 are newspaper articles and 6 are in periodicals and magazines.  The majority of the newspapers articles are from various editions of the "Stars and Stripes."  The magazine articles did not appear to be very helpful, and 539 newspaper articles is a lot to go through, so I added 1937 to my keyword search terms, thinking this would narrow my results.  Instead, however, it increased the number to 293,616 results.  I do not understand why adding terms increases the results, so I tried decreasing my search terms and just looking for the term "Hindenburg."  That search yielded 363 results with the first several being obituaries.  I can sort the results by category, but I still have over 300 in the various editions of the "Stars and Stripes" newspapers.  I looked at a few of these articles, but I didn't really find much that I felt would be of help to a student doing a report.  I think he would be better off using a different database.

3.  To find historical county information, I looked in the "Search Books" section of HeritageQuest.  From there I went to "Places" and put "Brown County" "South Dakota" in the search terms.  Several of the 30 results in the list dealt with genealogical information. I found only a couple which might be helpful.  They are A brief history of South Dakota by Doane Robinson and History of Dakota Territory by George W. Kingsbury.

Lesson 8

1.  I typed in the terms Nobel prize South Dakota Theodore Schultz and got one result.  This man's papers are held in the archives at Iowa State University in Ames.  I learned that Mr. Schultz received degrees from South Dakota State College and the University of Wisconsin.  He was on the faculty at Iowa State University for thirteen years before resigning "in protest" over the "oleomargarine controversy" and going on to the University of Chicago.  He received the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1979.

2.  I had a bit of trouble finding much to answer this question.  I tried general search terms such as Victorian fashion, England fashion, Victorian dress fashion clothing, etc. but either got no results or no results for the correct time period.  When I searched English clothing, I found pictures of one dress from 1875.  So I tried the terms English fashion.  I got the picture of the same dress I found earlier plus one other dress (from 1867-1870) as well as some other items that are not clothing.  I then did a search on the terms English dress and got one more result for that time period (in addition to the two mentioned above).  I did a search on Charles Dickens and found a couple portraits of him which show the type of clothing he wore.  It seems like I should be finding more results, but I have been unsuccessful at doing so.

After discussing this issue with a co-worker, she tried searching by just the term fashion.  That gives me 317 results.  Scrolling through the list, I found that there are some drawings of fashions from the correct time period.  I guess I don't understand the option to refine my results by date, because scrolling through the results I find ones that have dates of 1849, 1858, 1862, etc., but these dates do not show up in the refine section in the left column.  So, I guess I just have to look through all 317 records.

Lesson 7

1.  I did an advanced search using Martin Luther as as "named person," limiting the "type" to "books," and setting the "subtype" limits to "Juvenile" and "not fiction."  This gave me 932 results, but the first several were referring to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  So, I added the term "reformation" as a subject search.  This reduced the number of results to 57.  I think a good book to recommend would be "Martin Luther : father of the Reformation" Author: Somervill, Barbara A Accession Number: 61499876 which is owned by the Watertown Public Library. 

2.  I used the terms "graphic novel" as a subject phrase search along with the keyword "classic*" and  limited my search to English language books.  This gave me 16 results, which doesn't seem like very many.  I thought I would get more results.   Of those, I would probably choose to add "The Hobbit" published by Ballantine Books. [Addendum:  After finishing my post, I looked at a couple other people's posts and saw that they had many more results than what I got for my search.  I realize now that I should have used the terms "graphic novels" (not "graphic novel") and that gives many more results.]

3.  I did a Title Phrase search for "my fair lady" and limited the search to "musical scores."  I had 500 results,  which is a lot, but the first page of results had some good options.  I chose the second in the list, which is vocal score.  The accession number is: OCLC: 26429906