FILL ANY PDF

What do you do when a patron wants to fill out a pdf form online and they can't because it won't allow them? Well, you could send them to one of the branches that has a typewriter, but there is another option. Fill Any Pdf:

http://www.fillanypdf.com/

allows you to make any pdf form the kind you can fill out online. You will have to download the form first to "My Documents" on the patron Internet computers. The patron can even sign the form electronically with the mouse if they feel comfortable with that. I wouldn't recommend typing in Social Security numbers or credit cards numbers just in case someone else could see them, but otherwise it could be very handy.


--Andrea

BP Oil Spill Sources

Hello!

Here are few resources on the Deepwater BP oil spill.

Video, transcript, and White House Blog entry of President Obama's press conference.

The White House's page on the Deepwater BP oil spill.

Deepwater Horizon Response: Official site of the Deepwater Unified Command. The Coast Guard's Admiral Thad Allan is in charge of the clean up and this is the offical website talking about his operations.

Enjoy!
Melissa.
Government Documents Coordinator

Minnesota's Legislative History

From Robbie LaFleur of the MN Legislative Reference Library:

The Legislative Time Capsule is a new feature on the Legislative
Reference Library's website.

During the past 40 years of the Librarýs history, we have tracked
statistics about the Legislature. What first started as typewritten
lists in notebooks became text files on a computer and then pages on
our website. Still, researchers looking at individual sessions had
to find and compile statistics from many databases and web pages.
Wéve taken a giant step toward useful consolidation of legislative
statistics on the web, combining scattered data for each legislative
session. You can quickly find information on members, bills, laws,
vetoes, dates, special sessions, leadership, and more. The pages
draw information from the House and Senate, the Office of the Revisor
of Statutes, Legislative Manuals, and lists compiled by the
Legislative Reference Library.

The Legislative Time Capsule pages will only get better as we add
data and categories. For example, lists of committees are available
now back to 1917, but the remaining years will be added soon. As
time allow and staffing allow, we will add election results,
legislative district descriptions, links to books and articles about
the activities of each year, and more. If you have comments or
questions about the pages, or suggestions for information you would
like to see included, email us at refdesk@lrl.leg.mn.

Enjoy!
Melissa
Government Documents Coordinator

MINITEX REFERENCE REFERRAL

Minitex Reference Referral is a service that helps with questions that can't be answered with your library's resources. The 4 librarians on staff will take questions from public, academic or special libraries.

Reference Referral will do the following things to answer your queries:

• Search all University of Minnesota resources, including databases.


• Make trips to The Minnesota Historical Society and Hennepin County libraries.


• Contact experts and other libraries, either in Minnesota or nation-wide.
  
  

The number of questions they receive has been going down due to the Internet, but the ones they do get are harder. How long it takes to get an answer varies by how difficult the question is. Just like SPPL, they do not give legal, medical, or tax advice or appraisals on collectibles.

Please do the following when submitting queries:

• Let them know what sources you have already consulted.


• If you know a resource is available at the University, please suggest it.


• Specify if it is a rush request, or if it is not needed after a certain date.

Questions may be submitted by phone, email, or through the Mylibrary portal. You need to create a username and password for Mylibrary, but then you can go back and check on the status of the question online. Why not create your account today so you'll be ready when the time comes? You can then browse and see all the questions your SPPL colleagues have submitted.

--Andrea

MANGA READING LOUNGE @ANIME DETOUR 2010

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.


Inspired by this entry from the YALSA blog, we decided to try having a reading lounge at our local anime convention, Anime Detour. Katy and I met with Anime Detour representatives to set it up. Since some Hennepin County librarians were already planning to have a presence there, Melissa and I met with them to coordinate efforts. Both systems brought manga and nonfiction related to anime and manga. A drawing to win free manga and DVDs was very popular. Hennepin County brought eye-catching posters with both libraries' names on them (Check out this manga-style character created especially for the library). We handed out flyers for library events and SPPL-branded pens and ID cases/keychains. Did you know Hennepin County Library has an Anime Prom? That sounds like fun.

We were open 12-6 Friday and Saturday. All together, 174 people came to talk to us or check out the manga. We were a little worried at first about not having a separate room, but we had a big area right by the gaming room, which brought a lot of foot traffic. I think people appreciated having somewhere to relax and read as a break from all the convention excitement. Attendees often asked us where different events were (we librarians always look so helpful and knowledgeable), we did a bit of reader's advisory ("Are there any manga series with romance AND action AND character development?"*), while others just wanted to share their love of their favorite manga with us.

Thanks to Amy, Erik, Jody, Juli, Camden, Alicia, Jan and Ally B. from Hennepin County; Lori, Anton and Jo from Anime Detour; Sheree, Therese, Paul, RoseAnn, Jennifer, Bill, Carol, Barb M., Melissa and Katy.



--Andrea


*For manga reader's advisory, Manga: The Complete Guide by Jason Thompson is good, and Novelist has manga as well.

LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE, PART 5: TOWARDS DIGITAL INCLUSION

The Community Technology Empowerment Project (CTEP) and growing numbers of nonprofit organizations are working alongside libraries to overcome the digital divide by offering computer classes and computer labs. They realize that many people are looking for jobs and finding that the process requires computer skills they don't have and computers and internet access they can't afford. Community technology centers can be found in libraries, nonprofits, workforce centers, schools, neighborhood centers, parks, churches, synagogues and mosques.


As part of a panel discussion, several representatives from these organizations talked about the services they provide:

• Project for Pride in Living offers 30 minute one-on-one sessions, classes about specific jobs, employment help, informational classes such as explaining Facebook. They even send social workers out with laptops their clients can use.


• The Pillsbury Foundation has an employment-oriented computer center.


• Nexus Community Partners, which has an office on the East Side of St. Paul and created the Beehive website to help people find services they need, has started offering computer classes.

The Technology Literacy Collaborative is a new initiative that includes representatives from all these groups, including libraries. Their web page is under construction, but they plan to offer information on best practices and curricula for teaching technology literacy. They are working on a database of all community technology centers on the Twin Cities to replace this one, which is a bit out of date.

Handouts for this panel should be appearing in the FYI basket soon.



--Andrea

Notes from Gadgets: Personal Electronics for your Library (a webinar from WebJunction)

I have just been dragged into the 21st century via a webinar that purported to talk about Gadgets, and ended up being a 603-(yes, that is not a misprint)-way conversation in chat.
While the presenter was talking to us, there was a live chat stream going on the right hand side of the screen and while the presenter was talking quite a few of the participants were holding their own conversations about their own favorites, preferences and experiences with those gadgets. And to top it all off, many of those same participants were also tweeting at the same time. It amazed even the presenter and staff taking part in the webinar.

The presenter, Jason Griffey, is the head of library information technology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and author of the April issue of Library Technology Reports on the topic of "Gadgets and Gizmos". He is also a blogger.

His part of the presentation was basically an overview of the new tablet style of personal electronics. Since that was his focus, much of the 55 minute presentation felt like an extended commercial for the iPad. But some of the points he made are enumerated here.

1) Since the advent of these personal devices, the container and the content have become separate issues. In the good old days, a book was both container and content. Now there might be many separate containers which house the same content in different ways.

2) Media used to be one discrete medium-either text or video or audio. In the near future, a lot of content may be multimedia.

3) What used to be simply read is now heading towards interactivity....when people can change, or even create content with the container, it changes the game of librarianship significantly.

4) With the advent of the new tablets, your display and your interface are the same, there are no external parts, such as a keyboard or mouse. This brings in a new era of portability for everyone. Jason believes that touch electronics are the way all electronics will be in the future. The participants in the chat were not so sure.

5) Over the course of the next 12 months there will be no less than a dozen competitors for the iPad coming out. Of those he talked about, there is only one that may actually be a serious competitor, in his opinion. That device will be from Google and will be running ChromeOS. Google is also hoping to make these devices cheap enough to be "disposable". If they get it right, they might just have a breakthrough device on their hands, which will successfully challenge the iPad.

6) The price for e-readers is going to plummet in the next 12-18 months, because of the demand for tablets instead of readers. (Can you imagine buying a $50 e-reader and loading it with 300 classic titles and circulating that e-reader? How would you do it? How many would you need to keep up with demand?)

For those of you interested, here's the link to the whole shooting match... (chat transcript and all). Have fun!

http://www.webjunction.org/events/webinars/webinar-archives/-/articles/content/95933154


--Doris

LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE, PART 4: FAST, CHEAP AND OUT OF CONTROL

Any library can host a technology workshop for youth, you don't have to be a technology expert or have a lot of money. Lots of great free software is available. Don't put pressure on your self to understand something "perfectly" before you teach it. The presenters recommend a collaborative approach where teacher and student learn together. Some people need to be constantly reassured, while others prefer to do things themselves.

Hennepin County Library has trained teen volunteers so that they are now able to teach the classes. Other teens feel comfortable coming up to them and asking questions, while younger kids look up to them.

The main program they teach is Scratch which is a fun and easy animation program. We learned to use it in 30 minutes. Here is my project.



Other recommended free software for workshops:

• Sam animation--stop motion animation


• Artrage (not technically free, but can have an endless free trial with some features disabled)--drawing


• Audacity--audio editing


• Picasa--photo albums


• Gimp--photo editing


• Pivot--stick figure animation


• Kodu--video game creation

Optional equipment:

• Drawing tablet


• Digital camera


• Tripod


• Microphone

Handouts for the pressentation are available here.



--Andrea @central

LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE, PART 3: Wikipedia: The Educator's Friend (!)

Wikipedia can be an excellent springboard for learning lessons about research and the nature of authority.


Benefits of Wikipedia:

• Free


• More articles than Encyclopedia Britannica


• Up to date--good source for breaking news


• Accessible


• Each page contains a history of all changes


• Usually at or near the top of any Google search

Wikipedia is anti-expert. 50 % of doctors have used it in their work. It is the source most cited by bloggers. Andrew Lih (Wikipedia Revolution) calls it "The best place to start and the worst to stop."


Core policies of Wikipedia:

• Neutral point of view


• No original research


• Verifiability (can cite database or print sources, the source might not be available for free online)

Each article has references at the bottom--librarians can look for them in Google Books, databases, or catalogs and find more material by clicking on the subject headings that come up.



Advantages of databases/catalogs:

• Authors are experts


• Well-written


• Rhetorical skills instead of flames

If students contribute to Wikipedia, they can learn critical thinking.


Handouts are available here.


--Andrea @Central

LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE, PART 2: Best practices for creating online tutorials

If created properly, online tutorials can convey critical information to your library’s users. HTML tutorials are more interactive, but creating video tutorials or screencasts are easier.


Online tutorials are:

• Asynchronous --Can watch them at any time, but it's also easy for users to be distracted.


• Broadcast--Less interactive than face to face.


• Responsive & Scalable-- Many can do it at the same time or when it's convenient.


• A multimedia experience.


• effective for multiple learning styles.

Tutorials are most effective for:

• Chunks of info (they can't be exhaustive).


• Reaching a large or distant group.


• Encouraging multiple ways of learning.


• Tasks, processes or steps, not broad concepts.

Best practices for online tutorials


Design:

• Look at it through a local lens.


• Plan design before you do it. Design should be transparent--be clear about audience, outcomes, content (concept may need to be broken into several videos)


• Visual piece has to be engaging--think visually so users will be engaged mentally.


• Make content interactive--include things like quizzes.

Production:

• Break up content into chunks.


• No more than five minutes, tops --2-3 minutes is better.


• Do storyboarding ahead of time--50% scripting, 50% production.


• Use editing tools to make it more dynamic (this is an advantage Captivate, Camtasia or Screenflow has over free software)


• Everything should be consistent-- same shape of window, file type, text, contact info, and intro screen.


• Record short clips --stop any time you click a link or go to a page--that way you don't have to redo the whole thing if you mess up.

There are many free screencasting options available such as Screentoaster, Screencast-o-matic, Jing, Wink and Camstudio. They don't have editing options, but you could edit the screencasts later in another program like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. For free public domain music check out the Internet Archive or Jamendo.


For hearing impaired patrons, Camtasia & Captivate can have closed captioning.


Handouts for the presentation are available here.

LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE, PART 1: Readers Advisory 2.0

Social software can be used as a readers advisory tool. You can go where customers are, keep track of what you've read and connect with authors. Try several sites--they are mostly free and easy to drop if they don't work for you.

Hennepin County Library has a Web 2.0-style site called Bookspace. It lets you inform patrons when a book comes out, allows rss feeds & comments and the patron can create a profile. It was created with an in-house Coldfusion script.

Patrons can also create a weekly search in the Aquabrowser catalog.

Facebook can be used to promote the library's catalog and events. Authors have fan pages on Facebook to let readers know about visits & when new books will be coming out.

Libraries can create their own YouTube channel and upload fingerplays & booktalks. YouTube is also a source for author interviews and video tributes by fans to their favorite books.

Ning an easy way to create a group like mystery fans, science fiction, book club, etc.

Librarything is a site for cataloging one's books that is also social. The user can read other's reviews and get "reader's also like" recommendations--even books they would not like! Users create their own tags to identify books. Under the heading of "common knowledge" users add information like character names, movie adaptations and cover artists. Libraries can also publicize reading events there.

Goodreads is another social reading site. It offers book-swapping and quizzes.

Even Twitter can be useful--check out the hashtag #reading.

The Reader's Advisor Online blog is highly recommended by the presenters.

Handouts are available here.

--Andrea, Central

Happy Census Day!

While today is the official Census day, you still have a couple of weeks to fill out the form and send it back.

Here's a White House press release with more Census information and a picture of President Obama filling out his form.

Enjoy!
Melissa.
Government Documents Coordinator.

New Health Care Help

Confused about the New Health Care? Have patrons with questions you can't answer? Here’re four links to help you get better informed.

H.R.4872 Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010: Text of the bill, history, voting records and other basic legislative information. This is from Thomas: "In the spirit of Thomas Jefferson, legislative information from the Library of Congress."

HealthReform.gov The government Health Reform website managed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

“Health care reform bill 101: what the bill means to you” from the Christian Science Monitor.

"Health Care 2010: Tracking the national debate on health care system overhaul" from the Washington Post.

Enjoy!
Melissa.
Government Documents Coordinator.

Freedom of Information: Your Key to Open Government

I attended the Jane Kirtley lecture “Freedom of Information: Your Key to Open Government.”
Dr. Jane Kirtley is the Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

March 16th is National Freedom of Information Day, chosen because it’s James Madison’s birthday, and he’s known as the Father of the 1st Amendment. The week around March 16th is Sunshine Week, sponsored by the American Association of Newspaper Editors, which is “a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include print, broadcast and online news media, civic groups, libraries, nonprofits, schools and others interested in the public's right to know.”

The 1930s was when the Freedom of Government Information story really begins. Previously, the federal government was fairly small and relatively weak, and keeping information secret was not as important. In the 1930s, with the Great Depression and the New Deal, the Federal Government expanded very quickly and grew more and more powerful. Information started to really be the coin of the realm, and so to be a power base and subject to a hoarding mentality.

On July 4, 1966 The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was signed into law. It “is a law ensuring public access to U.S. government records. FOIA carries a presumption of disclosure; the burden is on the government - not the public - to substantiate why information may not be released. Upon written request, agencies of the United States government are required to disclose those records, unless they can be lawfully withheld from disclosure under one of nine specific exemptions in the FOIA. This right of access is ultimately enforceable in federal court.” National Security Archive.

FOIA gets amended roughly every 10 years. The 1996 amendment ordered government agencies to put information online. Unfortunately it was an unfunded mandate. Here’s the text of the current FOIA law at the Department of Justice.

If a person or entity wants a piece of federal government information that the agency in question does not want them to have, the person files a FOIA request with that agency. It’s up to the agency to prove that they don’t have to provide the information based on current FOIA law. If the agency denies the request, the requester then has the option of taking the agency to court if they feel the request was denied unfairly. Given the number of courts authorized to hear FOIA trials, the agency can almost always find a judge who’s sympathetic to them and will decide in their favor.

Unfortunately, FOIA does not always work as intended. There are often delays (the oldest open FOIA request is from 1992), sometimes because an agency doesn’t want to release the information, but more often because of things like bureaucratic delays, lack of clarity in the law, and lack of resources.

The largest users of FOIA are commercial concerns that are looking for a financial advantage. They can also more easily afford to pay for court costs if their requests are denied.

Government agencies are required to report on their FOIA activities. The DOJ puts together an annual compilation of Annual FOIA Reports Submitted by Federal Departments and Agencies and Annual FOIA Litigation and Compliance Reports. Also, every year the National Security Archive at George Washington University does a FOIA audit for the departments of the Federal Government.

After 9/11/01, a lot of government information was hidden with national security used as the reason. Personal privacy is the current popular reason for withholding information. Kirtley says there are 2 ways to deal with concerns about general access to information that is potentially sensitive. You can suppress it, which she feels is short-sighted – you’re treating the symptoms, not the disorder, or you can pass very carefully worded laws that criminalize the misuse of such information and create a judiciary that vigorously enforces them. She prefers the latter option.

President Obama promised a new era of open government, explained in the White House’s Open Government Initiative. There are also new guidelines for FOIA. Unfortunately, there’s very slow progress getting them implemented in Federal Agencies.

The legislature is considering the Faster FOIA Act of 2010, introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), “which will establish an advisory panel to examine agency backlogs in processing FOIA requests. Under the legislation, the panel, named the Commission on Freedom of Information Act Processing Delays, will be required to provide to Congress recommendations for legislative and administrative action to enhance agency responses to FOIA requests. The panel will be required to identify methods to reduce delays in the processing of FOIA requests, and will be charged with examining whether the system for charging fees and granting fee waivers under FOIA should be reformed in order to reduce delays in processing fee requests.”


Minnesota’s answer to FOIA on the state level is the MN Data Practices Act.
Here’s an Abbreviated Fact Sheet and a Data Practices Overview.

Dr. Kirtley stressed the importance of legacy or traditional media. One of the great media roles is watchdogging the government, an example of which is the creation and sponsorship of Sunshine Week. With legacy media’s decline, these efforts also decline. Now the American Association of Newspaper Editors have so little money that most of the content on this year’s Sunshine Week website is recycled from last year.

Her last point was that we need to contact our elected officials and tell them we want them to take open government seriously and to get judges who will enforce laws vigorously and not just let things pass.

Enjoy!
Melissa.
Government Documents Coordinator.

Questions patrons may have about the 2010 Census

Q. My census form has the wrong city on it. Should I send it in?

A. Yes. ""Don't worry," Dr. Groves wrote in The Director's Blog on March 17, noting that the mailing address and physical location of a house were different for census purposes. People will be counted "in the jurisdiction where your home is physically located," the director said. Addresses in a single ZIP code were labeled using a single city name to streamline delivery for the "largest single [mailing] ever undertaken by the United States," Dr. Groves noted.

The Postal Service uses multiple city names to deliver mail when a ZIP code crosses jurisdictional boundaries, he said. Each census form has a unique bar code that is used to check-in forms as they are returned by mail; the bar code is tied to a mailing address that includes the city or town associated with the physical location of the home. The director urged people not to cross off the address or bar code on their questionnaire."


Q. Will participating in the 2010 Census potentially get me in trouble with the immigration authorities?

A. No. "Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano told lawmakers that the department is "committed to working with the Census Bureau to ensure our enforcement responsibilities do not interfere" with "a thorough and accurate" census.

In a March 16 letter to members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Secretary assured legislators that personal census responses "will not be shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and may not be used for immigration enforcement purposes." The Census Act (13 U.S.C. §§8 & 9) prohibits the Census Bureau from revealing any personally identifiable information collected in the census and provides that personal census responses may not be used against an individual, are immune from legal process, and may not be admitted as evidence (without an individual's consent) in any judicial or administrative proceeding.

The letter followed a meeting between Hispanic lawmakers and President Obama; at that March 11 meeting, the lawmakers expressed concern that continued immigration raids would discourage immigrants from participating in the census. Secretary Napolitano reiterated that neither the Commerce Department nor the Census Bureau would ask ICE to suspend immigration enforcement during the census. She acknowledged for the first time, however, that the two executive branch departments were working together to ensure that immigration-related activities "do not affect [the Census Bureau's] ability to collect accurate and comprehensive data for the census.""

from The Census Project, Census News Brief 3/21/10

Enjoy!
Melissa.
Government Documents Coordinator.

Cool new Gov Doc tool: Census Mail Participation Rates for 2000 & 2010

The Census Bureau has put out an interactive mapping tool for finding out Census Mail Participation Rates for 2000 & 2010. This tool goes down to the census tract level, and will also give you a snapshot of an area using colors representing participation rates. Data is updated Monday through Friday, and is so pretty close to real time.

Right now Minnesota is at 29% with the National rate being 20%. In 2000 MN returned 78% while nationally the rate was 70%.

It's really important that MN has a high response rate for the Census; millions of dollars and a seat in the House of Representatives are at stake.

Enjoy!
Melissa.
Government Documents Coordinator.

3 Bureau of Justice Statistics Reports on Sexual Victimization in Corrections Facilities Cited in the New York Review of Books

Hello.

This came up on my Government Documents listerv. We might want to know how to find these resources in case a patron asks for them.

The New York Review of Books cited three Bureau of Justice Statistics reports on sexual victimization in corrections facilities in the March 11th issue. They provided a bibliography but not web links. Here are the reports. I cannot find any of them in CGP or in DD2's shipping list database of items distributed to depositories. But you can find them through the BJS website and using Google.

Sexual Victimization in Juvenile Facilities Reported by Youth, 2008-09
by Allen J. Beck, Paige M. Harrison, and Paul Guerino
Bureau of Justice Statistics, 49 pp. (2010)
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/svjfry09.pdf

Sexual Victimization in State and Federal Prisons Reported by Inmates, 2007
by Allen J. Beck and Paige M. Harrison
Bureau of Justice Statistics, 48 pp. (2007)
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/svsfpri07.pdf

Sexual Victimization in Local Jails Reported by Inmates, 2007
by Allen J. Beck and Paige M. Harrison
Bureau of Justice Statistics, 43 pp. (2008)
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/svljri07.pdf

Enjoy!
Melissa.
Government Documents Coordinator.

BYKI

Byki (pronounce BIKE-e) is new language learning software from Recorded Books (publisher of the Pimsleur language sets) and Transparent Language. It contains 85 languages including ESL for several languages. No Hmong or Somali yet, but Byki is still growing.

Byki is based on a flash card system. It is meant to be the equivalent of the first 2 or 3 semesters of college. The user can save their progress and jump around among the cards, which have words or phrases in the user's native language one side 1 and the foreign language on side 2. There are 5 main steps in the course:


1. Review It--look through both sides of the cards. If the speaker is too fast, click on the "turtle" icon below to slow them down.

2. Recognize It--See side 2 of the card and think or say side 1.

3. Know It--See side 2 of the card and type the information from side 1.

4. Produce It--See side 1 of a card in your list and think of or say side 2.

5. Own It--See side 1 of a card and type the information from side 2. Clicking on the "keyboard" icon below will re-map your keyboard to the characters of the foreign language. It will not work for syllabic languages like Chinese or Japanese unless the user re-programs their home computer to type in that language.


In addition, you can record your voice and have it graded for pronunciation. This requires a microphone, but cheap ones can be purchased for $7 or so. Recording seems to work only with Internet Explorer on Windows PCs, but if anyone is able to get it to work with other browsers let me know. Some, but not all, of the non-Latin-alphabet languages have an alphabet tab to help in learning letters or syllables.

To help the user feel part of a learning community, each language has a Facebook page, Twitter stream, and a blog. A "Word of the Day" can be sent to the user's email or RSS reader.

Users are encourage to contact Byki's Tech Support if they have any technical issues. There is also an FAQ and a video guided tour.


--Andrea

PHOTOGRAPHY TOUR OF THE LIBRARY

On Saturday, Feb. 13, I gave a tour to members of the Flickr Twin Cities group. They were doing a photo walk of downtown St. Paul. Here are some lovely pictures they took of the library:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/libtour21310/

Check out this page for some comments they made.

--Andrea

POWER SEARCH!

The Foundation Directory Online has a new search option: Power Search! Now a patron can search FDO's four main databases at once: Grants, Grantmakers, Companies, and 990s. In addition, it searches news stories, RFPs, PubHub reports, and The Catalog of Nonprofit Literature. Pubhub is a collection of foundation-sponsored reports and the Catalog of Nonprofit Literature is the catalog of the Foundation Center's own libraries.

A phrase surrounded by quotation marks or a string of keywords can be entered into Power Search, for a more "Google-like" experience. "And" is implied between a series of words. Once a search is entered, options appear on the left to guide further searching. FDO now gives you options to narrow your results. I like the way numbers of hits are listed with each option. You can also search with results by putting a keyword in the search box at the top. if you change your mind about narrowing, simply uncheck the box on the left to go back to your old results.

Don't forget though, when you search the individual databases the default is still "or". For example, in Search Grantmakers if you want to find grantmakers who have a geographic focus of either Minnesota or the whole country, you view the index and click on "Minnesota", then "National". "Or" will be added automatically. If you want an "and" search, you have to type in "and".