Morningstar

Hello!

I attended a Morninstar Webinar on Thursday 8/4/11, and here's what I learned.

Morningstar is an investment database. They offer information on Companies (Stocks), Funds (Mutual Funds), ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds), and Markets. Information includes (where relevant): price – current and historic, analysis, comparison, ranking, bond ratings, etc. I love that you can check out executive compensation under the Insiders tab on Companies, and you can get SEC filings. All the information you’d expect to see on an investment site, plus the value added feature of Morningstar analysis and opinion.

To find historic stock prices, after the upgrade on 8/9/11, go to the Performance tab, and then click on “Price History.” Fill in the requested information, and away you go.

The “Screen for” option under Companies, Funds, and ETFs leads to screening tools to help you narrow down your options from thousands of possibilities. First “Select Data to Screen on” (you can select “General” and then click the Morningstar Screens button to the right. Answer the resulting questions and Morningstar will help you find options that meet your criteria.

This database will also help you with your portfolio. There’s a Portfolio X-Ray that, when you enter all your portfolio information and what your goal is, will analyze your portfolio and tell you where you might want to make amendments. There are also calculators for college and retirement to help you figure out a figure to use as a goal.

One of the real strengths of this database is all of the educational opportunities. Under the Portfolio section, you can learn about asset allocation and there are a series of Goal Primers to teach you the “ins and outs of goal-based investing.” There’s also an Investing 101 video here that the instructor highly recommended.

The “Help and Education” tab offers many more learning opportunities, including guides for using the database, a second set of Goal Primers, a glossary of investment terms, and information on “Morningstar’s proprietary ratings and measures.” They’ll soon be launching a Tutorial Center with 3-5 minute videos. There’s also an Investment Classroom which includes Stocks, Funds, and Portfolio curriculums, each including a number of 10 minute lessons at different levels, each of which ends with a quiz. So Morningstar is a great alternative to books for patrons who want to learn about investing.

Under the Newsletters tab, Morningstar offers “PDFs of the most-popular newsletters from our mutual fund, stock, and ETF strategists.” This includes the basic Mutual Fund paper that we get in print.

You need to have the pop-up blocker disabled on your browser.

Current news is not part of the database. The Market Overviews in the Market tab will include financial news of the past quarter or year – whichever time period you pick. That would include things like the Debt Ceiling issue. Morningstar.com offers the current financial news, and you can get a market news feed. You do have to register for Morningstar.com to get the good stuff, but you can do it for free.

Melissa.

DEVELOPING ONLINE PATRON TUTORIALS

E-book tutorial from the Carmel Clay library.

Online patron tutorials are a way to teach patrons about our resources in a way that they can access from home at any time. They are also used by patrons who are reluctant to ask for help. Usually they are created using a video camera or screencasting software ware such as Captivate or Camtasia.

Online tutorials should be available in several places on the library web site: on a banner with rotating "tutorials of the day", on a dedicated page, next to the resources it discusses (databases, e-books, etc.). They should be promoted on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Libraries can partner with other agencies. Dallas Public Library offers a tutorial on applying for a job with the city of Dallas. Screencasts can be done in multiple languages, and the software usually has closed captioning.

Requirements for screencasting:

• Time to do it


• Training-can learn screencasting in an hour


• A good microphone


• Screencasting software (there are free options)


• Subject expertise--staff should have this, they train patrons every day!
  


• Hosting--some libraries pay to have tutorials hosted on their own web site, however there are free sites like YouTube that will do it for you.

Screencasts shouldn't be more than 3 minutes, and they should be light and informal. They don't have to be perfect or have fancy production values.


Should your library use online tutorials?

• Do you have commonly asked questions?


• Do you have resources accessed remotely?


• Do you have excellent resources that aren't getting enough attention?

Then the answer is yes!




Handouts and an archived version of the webinar are available here.


--Andrea @Central

NetLibrary Downloadable Audiobooks Training Notes

Hello!

Much about our NetLibrary downloadable audiobooks has stayed the same, but there have been changes. These notes are a mix of reminders of things you might have forgotten and new information. If something's not talked about, it should work the same as it ever has.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about these notes or the training.

Melissa @ Central
651-266-7000 x5

Types of books:

Multi-access - Always available. No holds necessary. Unlimited use. Multiple patrons can use it at the same time.

Single-access - One patron per book at a time. Works the same way as a physical product. Patrons are put on hold and will be emailed when book is available.

WMA - Windows media audio - no iPods. Has Digital Rights Management (DRM). Refers to access control used by publishers which limits usage of digital media or devices. Publisher insists on the license that corrupts in 3 weeks. It enforces limitations on the usage.

MP3 - compatible with everything including iPods. No DRM. The limitations here are a function of the way the system works, instead of being imposed from the outside, as with DRM. There is no license.

Titles are segmented (tracks) by the hour.

We have the Adult Core Collection (purchased by MELSA).

2340+ titles to start (includes Modern Scholar, Coach in the Box, The Bible, and other specialty imprint titles).

Of those, 1180+ are MP3.

Every month 30 titles added at no additional cost. At least 20 of those are MP3s.

All titles in or added to this collection are Multi-Access.

Some of the WMAs will be retrospectively converted to iPod.

SPPL occasionally purchases additional titles. Those are single-access.


Whether a title is WMA or MP3 depends on what the author and publisher want. It’s a security and access issue. With DRM you have more security from pirating and misuse. With MP3 you have more access.




Downloading & Syncing:
To sync – to load onto your portable device.

Click on Download Options banner and it will analyze your machine and tell you which download method to use. There are 4 possible methods.

1. Media Center

This will be the recommended option most of the time. Still does not work with Macs.

Media Center doesn’t take too long to download - 3 minutes? But it does need to run Microsoft updates for the Windows Media Player (WMP), if the patron does not update regularly. This can take a little bit of time.

Automatically connects with the NetLibrary database. This program won’t work if you’re offline. Your books are stored on your hard drive, and it’s integrated with WMP, which is why WMP has to be properly updated.

It still works pretty much the same way. You can use it as a stand-alone utility that will allow you to search for books and download them with one click (after you attach your device to the computer). You don’t need to go to the NetLibrary website. However, you can still start your session and do your searching on the website, if you prefer, and then NetLibrary will launch Media Center when it’s time for you to do the One-Click downloading. (It’s One-Click because it downloads the book and the license, and syncs to your portable device in one step.)

Media Center can recommence interrupted downloads. Patron can choose to interrupt a download if they don’t have enough time, or just want the first 2 tracks, etc.

If there’s a problem with Media Center – patron gets lost or confused, etc. hit the Home button and it’ll reset.

Note: Some people have trouble with Media Center if they’re running a 64 bit computer and don’t have the latest Windows 7 update. They should try running Windows Update, and see if that helps.

2. Download manager

This is a simplified version of Media Center. It allows you to manage your collection from your desktop.

You can download a book to your portable device, play it on your computer, and delete the file, all while being offline. Recommended for those with no or very slow internet connections, for instance if you have a laptop with WiFi but no home internet connection, or dial-up. You can take your laptop to someplace with WiFi and check out and download the book and then listen to it or sync it offline at home. This takes the place of putting your books on a flash and taking them home and using them there. With this process the license downloads automatically.

First go to the NetLibrary website and find and check out the book. Then go to Download Manager to complete the download.

Once it’s been checked out and downloaded - you don’t need an internet connection to use the manager. The files are stored on your hard drive.

Download Manager is also good for those who are new to computers or who are having issues with Media Center.


3. Manual Download

This is the basic download method using the NetLibrary website. It involves downloading the book and the license, and then using WMP or iTunes to sync the book to your portable device. Tip: Drag file from desktop or file into the WMP sync list instead of from within WMP.

This is the method that works with Macs.

For the iPad and iPhone 4 you should download and sync with iTunes.

Sometimes the license does not download correctly. First try playing the book on your computer and see if that gets the license to download. If that doesn’t work, then renew the book and that should trigger a license download. (For WMAs renewal means downloading a new license.)


Media Center and Download Manager don’t play well together – Media Center takes over. Can’t have both downloaded on one computer.

4. Smart Phones.

These devices mostly use MP3s, but not exclusively.

Media Center and Download Manager don’t automatically download to the device.

You can do a manual download and sync.

The process automatically creates a folder in Documents called NetLibrary.

OR:

You can change setting for connection to computer from “charge only” to “disk drive.“ Generally defaults to charge only. You can then literally drag and drop the files into the smart phone, just like you would onto a flash drive.

The mobile app’s coming. Right now the app stores are holding it for approval.

JOBVIEW TRAINING

Jobview is meant to be a very simple, keyboard-free way to search a database of 2 million jobs. These jobs are accessible for free elsewhere, but JobView brings together a feed from 25 different web sites, scrubs them for duplicates, and posts them every morning.

Searching is by category only, a keyword option was tried but found to be too complicated. The patron can limit search to part-time and hourly only. A flag next to a job means a preference for veterans. You can limit by city and state and do a radius search, the whole country is included.

In addition to kiosks at Central, Rondo and Sun Ray, the web version of JobView is available on patron Internet computers system-wide and in the 4th floor training room. Patrons can apply for jobs and attach resumes using the web version only. Currently, SPPL is the only MELSA library with JobView. Give it a try sometime!

Andrea @Central

SCIENCE RESOURCES IN ELM

Within ELM, there are three main databases containing science resources. They are EBSCO Science Reference Center, Gale General Science Collection, and Gale Discovering Collection.

Science Reference Center contains periodicals, reference books, encyclopedias, biographies, images and videos. It is currently available as a stand-alone database in the familiar EBSCOHost format, as part of the more high-school friendly Student Research Center, and as part of the elementary- and middle school- level Kids Search. Advanced Search options include curriculum benchmarks and the document type “science experiment”.

General Science Collection contains the full-text of 60+ science journals. It is geared to upper high school and above. Some of the titles have a full-text embargo of six months to a year. In addition to reading, printing or saving text, patrons can listen to articles or download them as sound files.

Discovering Collection is Gale’s database on topics including science for grades 6 - 12. It includes science encyclopedias, topic overviews, multimedia content, biographies, and science experiements. In advanced search, the patron can limit document type to “experiment activity”.

In addition to the above databases, Britannica Online also has excellent interactive science lessons and multimedia guides.

--Andrea





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Locating Consumer Information in ELM

Many of our old favorite databases in ELM are excellent sources of consumer information. For example, Masterfile Premier features Consumer Reports in addition to specific periodicals on computers, electronics, home repair, etc. which also have product reviews. Business Source Premier is a good source for investment and money management tips. ProQuest contains reviews of films, books, plays, and restaurants. Consumer Health Complete is a good source for information on medications and medical tests. Netlibrary contains searchable online books on travel, legal self-help, resumes, and over 360 books in the Complete Idiots series (no titles are more recent than 2007, so keep that in mind if currency is an issue).


To search for product reviews in Masterfile Premier, click on “advanced search”, then go down to “document type” and choose “product review”.

Consumer Health Complete has the Lexi-PALS Drug Guide where patrons can look up what a medication is for, side effects and contraindications (the latter includes herbs and supplements as well as prescription and OTC medications). For medical tests, just type in the name (e,g, CT scan) and a fact sheet should come up telling the possible reasons for the test and what to expect.

ProQuest Newstand Complete has a plethora of search options for patrons looking for reviews. In “Advanced Search” one of the options is “document type”. If you click on “Look up document types”, you will get options such as film review, book review, theater review, restaurant review, etc. If you scroll down and click on “More Search Options”, then “Any document type”, under “Reviews--More review options”, you can choose Favorable, Unfavorable, Mixed, or Comparative. This would be very handy for travelers looking for things to do in a new city. They could look for “Chinese” in document text, “New York City” in location, then limit to only favorable restaurant reviews for good Chinese restaurants to try.


The Star Tribune is in ProQuest Newstand Complete back to 1986. The presenter said that the indexing could be better, but there are search options that don’t exist in Minnesota Newspapers. In the course of this webinar, I discovered that the Pioneer Press was added to ProQuest on April 22, 2010.



--Andrea

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

HEATH AND MEDICAL RESOURCES IN ELM

This webinar focused on the five new health databases available from ELM. Health Source: Consumer Edition and Alt Health Watch are designed for the general public. Health Source includes full-text of popular health periodicals like Prevention and Men's Health, pamphlets, reference books, and Merriam-Webster's Medical Desk Dictionary. Also, the Lexi-Pal Drug Guide, which contains information such as side-effects and contraindications for generic and brand name drugs, including over-the counter. Alt Health Watch is a database of academic and popular periodicals and reports on complementary and alternative medicine.


The Consumer Health Complete database combines the previous two databases to make a good starting point for the patron. In addition, it offers 2000 medical images and 800 videos. Its evidence-based reports are 2-page overviews of health topics which are fact-heavy and easily digestible. Medical terms are hyperlinked to the medical dictionary. The Blausen Human Atlas offers animations of human anatomy. For the most part, these databases offer the usual EBSCO options for saving, emailing, and printing entries. The two exceptions are the medical images, which can only be saved by right-clicking on them with the mouse, and the videos and animations, which cannot be saved, but can be accessed later by copying the permalink.


The other two databases, Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition and Medline, are geared to an academic/professional audience. Medline has citations and abstracts only, not full-text.

EBSCO POINTS OF VIEW

Points of View is a database of resources for persuasive essays or speeches. It includes reference books, television and radio transcripts, and primary sources as well as articles. Each resource is given a Lexile or reading level number. There are also research guides on how to choose a topic, make an outline, write the essay, and cite sources.


The patron can search for topics, browse the hot-button topics on the front page or click on "view all topics" for an A-Z list. Most topics contain an overview, point and counterpoint (pro and con sounds too negative), and a critical analysis. The critical analysis helps the patron to judge articles, separate fact from fiction, decide their own opinion and debate it.


Points of View allows the patron to create a folder just like MegaFile and Novelist Plus. Sharing of folders is not currently available, but it is slated for 2010. Meanwhile, patrons can view Points of View articles in their shared folder, they just can't create the shared folder in POV.

--Andrea

EBSCOHOST TRAINING SESSION RE-CAP

Below are some tips and ideas from the Ebscohost training session on September 3, 2009.

Consumer Reports is now available.
Congressional Digest is now available.

Folders—Both session folders and “My Ebscohost” folders are available. Users who set up “My Ebscohost” folder can set up alerts, create subfolders and share their folders with other users (who also have a “My Ebscohost” folder). Custom folders can be shared in Ebscohost and Novelist.

Customer supports site contains free handouts and information about database features. For example, this page explains how to share a folder.

Smart text searching option (choose “smart text” under “search modes”) — allows users to paste in large amount of information (such as an abstract from an article). Ebscohost parses out that information and uses “or” searches.

Image results are now pulled out of native (digitized) pdf files and will soon be pulled out of html files—so users can see images available in articles. The database also includes information on how to cite images and a permission feature, which tells users how the images may be used.

Articles contain persistent links, which can be posted to a library web page or saved by users to access articles.


Default searching looks only in citation info. A “search within full text” option is available.

Novelist picture book extenders offer ideas for activities to accompany picture books.


Points of View — Key content is not available in any other Ebsco resources. This database includes 800 topics with four essays on each topic.

Novelist Plus is improving its readers’ advisory services. Training modules are available on the right sidebar. Recommended Reads in Novelist Plus provides good ideas for book displays

--Tracy

EBSCO 2.0 UPDATE

SmartText searching is now available in EBSCO 2.0. It is below the basic search box under "Search modes." Type or paste in a sentence, paragraph, or article and give it a try!


--Andrea

EBSCOhost 2.0

The new EBSCO interface for MasterFILE Premier, MegaFILE, Academic Source Premier, and Business Source Premier is here! It opens with a clean, simple, Google-like interface, but don't worry, you can get still additional options by clicking on "Search Options" or "Advanced Search" below. After you perform a search, three panes pop up. The middle is the results, the left has narrowing options like source and subject (click on "more" to get more subject options), and the right has limiters like full-text, peer-reviewed and date (with a slick slider to change the date instead of typing it in). Also, the right pane has a link to your folder and related images. By 2009, all articles that come in .pdf form should have related images available in full-color as a separate file. If you don't like this view, the left and right panes can be hidden by clicking on little arrows.

The green bar above the results is called a breadcrumb trail. It lists what subjects you have added so if one doesn't work out, you can return to an earlier search without going back to the beginning. It also allows you to add a search to your folder, create an email alert, or save a search to RSS. I saved a search to RSS and tried reading it in Bloglines at home. It worked very well, I only had to type my library card in to access it, not my name or PIN. Other options in the results pane include: previewing the article by clicking on the magnifying option, a more prominent "add to folder" option, and relevancy rankings (when you rank by relevancy, the number of green squares show how relevant the article is considered to be).

In the individual record, delivery options are more prominent: Print, Email, Save to External Disc or Hard Drive, Save to Folder, Cite, or Export to Citation Software (EndNote, ProCite, Refworks). By 2009, there will be an option to copy citations to a computer's clipboard. EBSCO also suggests similar articles. Clicking on the "Bookmark" icon at the bottom of the article to the right of the persistent link will allow you to bookmark the article to Internet Explorer Favorites, Del.icio.us, Stumbleupom, Myspace, Facebook, Google Bookmarks, and many other services. Articles and searches are also bookmarkable.

Other new items on the front page include: new and improved visual search; "Search History/Alerts" which allows you to view previous searches, save searches, and combine searches; and the big blue EBSCO button, which you can always click on to go back the the beginning. EBSCO's training materials also mention a "SmartText Search", which lets the user copy a sentence, paragraph or whole article, then the database searches for similar articles. This doesn't appear to be active yet.


This new version of the EBSCO interface has a familiar, less intimidating starting point and makes the limiting and narrowing options more visible to the patron. For a presentation, Flash demo, brochures and more, check here.

--Andrea

NoveList Plus and NoveList K-8 Plus

NoveList Plus is a readers' advisory resource for fiction and nonfiction. Read more about it ...

NoveList K-8 Plus focuses on nonfiction reading materials that support the school curriculum, as well as the recreational reading interests of children and students from preschool through middle school. Read more about it ...

Try them out and tell us what you think!

NEW DATABASE TRIAL: BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Powered by Gale's What Do I Read Next? series, Books & Authors combines both browseable menus and visual search technology to guide readers from every level of reading proficiency to books that match their interests.

Information Sheet (PDF)

Try it out and tell us what you think.

(No username or password required).

PROQUEST NEWSTAND COMPLETE

ProQuest Newstand Complete is a database of over 500 local, national and international newspapers, 350 of which have full-text. Content is continually being added, including some obituaries and letters to the editor. The Star-Tribune is included, but not the Pioneer Press or the Duluth News-Tribune.

New features of ProQuest Newstand Complete include: smart search, search alerts, citation options, saving a search as a web page, and permalinks. Smart search is accessed under the “topics tab”. If your patron is finding it hard to get the right subject, smart search will suggest topics, compare search terms to index terms, and suggest options for narrowing the search such as additional terms, date, or publication. The patron may have to click on “next” or “view all” to see all the topic suggestions.

The “My Research” folder lets you save search results in order to manipulate them in different ways. This folder only lasts for the duration of the session, unlike MyEBSCOHost in EBSCO MasterFILE Premier, however registration is not required. Clicking in the “mark” box will automatically save records to the folder, no additional “save marked records” step is needed. Search results can be emailed, printed, or saved as a web page. The web page can be saved to a floppy or flash drive on a public terminal. A bibliography can be created which can be emailed, printed, saved, or exported to citation software such as RefWorks. The default citation option is the one ProQuest uses, but it can be changed to MLA, APA, AMA, or Chicago/Turabian.
Search alerts can be set up from the results screen. A pop-up window gives the option to search daily, weekly, or monthly on a topic and sends results to the email provided. It can be set up to stop after the project is completed. The default subject of the email is the search string, so the patron may want to change it to something snappier that they will remember.

One other thing I didn’t know: ProQuest has a “select multiple databases” option in Basic and Advanced Search. Unfortunately, historical databases and non-historical databases can’t be searched together, so you can’t search ProQuest Newstand Complete and Historical New York Times at the same time.

Supplementary materials are available in the “FYI” box in Cube City.

Minnesota Newspaper Database Available from Home!

Hello!

The Minnesota Newspapers database is now available to patrons from home. The announcement is on the homepage.

Melissa.