Library Lines

Library Showcase

2010-11-09T16:57:00.000-05:00

My first (sucessful) Custom Google search!

2008-05-05T12:48:00.003-04:00

Last week one of our General Science classes was to do an assignment on Acid Rain. The Special Ed teacher, Danielle Hurd, thoughtfully emailed me the assignment and a page of weblinks she wanted the students to use. Because of the structure of the assignment, the level of the class, and the targeted selection of websites, it occurred to me that this might be exactly the task that Google Custom Search was designed for.

So...I went to Google, selected More, and Even more, which brings you to this window

I logged in to my Google account, spent a few minutes copying and pasting url's and -- voila! - a custom Acid Rain search engine! Give it a try ...
Acid Rain - Groff/Hurd

Free documentaries -- really!

2008-03-13T12:46:00.004-04:00

Mrs. Brice-Hyde, one of our Social Studies teachers, told me today about the website http://www.freedocumentaries.org/. On it you can view (full screen!) any of about 90 full length documentaries. The list includes Merchants of Cool, Bowling for Columbine, and SICKO. As you can see the dominant themes are social and political.

The films cannot be downloaded, and I suspect that viewing them uses quite a bit of bandwidth, but nevertheless these are awesome resources.

The site logo says "Beta", so I'm not sure whether this is a long term option, but it is certainly a great place for teachers to preview these programs. Let me know if you see something we should be adding to our DVD collection.

Is cursive an obsolete skill?

2008-03-04T09:09:00.004-05:00

Funny, but with a fillip of nostalgia http://obsoleteskills.wikispot.org/Skills.

I added a heading for Looking up books using a card catalog, but don't have time to do the stub right now.

A Vision of K-12 Students Today

2008-02-08T15:25:00.001-05:00

Impact of Governor's $5 million cut in Library Aid

2008-01-30T08:43:00.000-05:00

IMPACT OF PROPOSED 2008-09 EXECUTIVE BUDGET ON LIBRARY SERVICES IN OUR AREA

Public Library System
Southern Tier
$1,544,756 2007 - 2008 budget
$87,344 2008 - 2009 cut

BOCES/School Library Systems

GST
$232,070 2007 - 2008 budget
$35,049 2008 - 2009 cut

Library Council

SCRLC

$419,724 2007 - 2008 budget
$47,772 2008 - 2009 cut

2008-01-23T10:01:00.000-05:00

The HHS library now subscribes to the OED Online!

The legendary Oxford English Dictionary today contains over 600,000 words and 2,500,000 quotations to illuminate the meaning and history of those words. http://dictionary.oed.com/entrance.dtl

For example: ( N. B.This could be very helpful in a Scrabble game! )

QALY, n. DRAFT ENTRY Dec. 2007
Brit. /kwli/, U.S. /kwli/ [Acronym < name="50291881def1">
A quality-adjusted life year; a unit used, esp. in cost-benefit analysis, in the prediction of both quality and duration of life after medical or surgical treatment.
1976 R. ZECKHAUSER & D. S. SHEPARD in Law & Contemp. Probl. 40 11 We shall employ a hypothetical utility function in our analyses. The unit of output will be quality-adjusted life years, to be referred to by the acronym QALY. 1989 V. R. GODWIN in M. G. Field Success & Crisis in National Health Syst. ix. 278 Recent findings indicate that the cost of a QALY of hemodialysis in a hospital is fourteen times that of a coronary artery by-pass graft. 2005 Health & Med. Week (Nexis) 14 Mar. 1219 A threshold of cost-effectiveness of approximately $45,000/QALY gained was used.

Additional Literary Criticism Added

Also, our Literature window now has a link to

Bloom's Literary Reference Online, a vast collection of critical volumes, focusing on the writers and works most often studied in high schools and universities.

and more...

We have a 2 week trial to the Visual Thesaurus (email: trial4@visualthesaurus.com; password: swift258). The Visual Thesaurus is a tremendous resource for improving your students' reading, writing, and communication skills. Students find the Visual Thesaurus captivating and playful, and are quickly engaged in learning new words and concepts. Please let us know what you think of this resource, and if you would be interested in a demo of some of its features.

2008-01-16T11:33:00.000-05:00

What a neat site! It helped me find some new books -- always a good thing. Give it a try and let me know what you think...

Enter a book you like and the site will analyse our database of real readers'favourite books (over 32,000 and growing) to suggest what you could read next.

Season's Greetings from the Library

2007-12-14T08:40:00.001-05:00

Hope you get lots of good books from Santa!

Library windows get pretty!

2007-11-14T14:55:00.000-05:00

Many thanks to Mrs. Harrington's Art classes for a creative solution to our window glare problem! We love our literary windows!

End of an Era?

2007-10-17T09:13:00.000-04:00

Today I am feeling nostalgic for the Internet of past years. Lately it seems to have become more and more about e-commerce. Not necessarily a bad thing -- I too shop online -- but some of my favorite sites have disappeared or become commercialized. And this week myBookmarks added advertisements to the Library's Bookmarks page.

Sob -- I have so enjoyed the eight commercial-free years!

Wikepedia as entertainment

2007-05-07T08:47:00.000-04:00

So, we had this REALLY SCARY LOOKING bug in the sink in my office -- it had A LOT OF legs -- and I thought "this could be a centipede - aren't they poisonous?" -- so I checked online and one of the sources I looked at was Wikipedia -- and it said [The house centipede] is an insectivore that kills and eats insects, as well as graduate students.
(emphasis mine).

That's my Wikepedia story for today!

Ever heard of 'leetspeak'?

2007-05-02T09:20:00.000-04:00

I never had, but apparently it's been around since the 1980s! According to Wikipedia the word derives from elite, and was originally the language of gamers and hackers (or, as Wikipedia says hackers, crackers, and script kiddies).

A combination of slang, shorthand and encryption, leet (or l33t)is becoming more pervasive as our youth increasingly use text messaging and chat, "u kNoW, 2 spd th1ngs uP" (hope that's not too n00bish!11).

You can learn more from these articles Wikipedia, and 1337Speak- The Guide, or go to the Leetspeak generator to translate your own words.

Graphic Novels arrive in the library!

2007-04-30T15:08:00.000-04:00

Mrs. Clack has started a collection of graphic novels. Many of them are now featured in our display case, but can be checked out on request.

If you would like a list of all of the titles we own, do a subject search in the library catalog for Graphic Novels -- there are 62 at this time!

Horseheads High School student selected for award

2007-04-25T14:07:00.000-04:00

One of our favorite library users, Chris Hoffman, has been awarded a WENY Everyday Hero Award! He will receive a $50 savings bond and plaque, courtesy of CCSD Federal Credit Union.

"Students are chosen based on their community and school involvement, including mentoring and kind gestures, etc." Aside from being an all around nice person, he reads widely and has a greater variety of interests than most people his age. Recently he cut his hair, and for the second time donated to Locks of Love. Congratulations Chris!

Next little thing 2007 - An ATM for books - December 1, 2006

2007-01-31T14:06:00.000-05:00

Next little thing 2007 - An ATM for books - December 1, 2006

Wow - ran across this article after a discussion about how quickly books are going out of print. The implications of this are mind boggling. A world class library in something the size of a large photocopy machine!

I wonder how the NYPL will handle the printouts? Will they charge? Will they sign them out? How will this effect interlibrary loan? Etc....

Movie Reviews, Music Reviews, TV Show Reviews, Game Reviews, Book Reviews - Metacritic.com

2007-01-25T12:24:00.000-05:00

Even though Metacritic lists Book Reviews last, I still think it is a wonderful site. Being who I am I only looked at the book reviews, specifically reviews of The God Delusion, a book I am considering using some of my precious Audible credits to download. I was extremely impressed with the quality of the reviews included. Very easy to use, and well designed. Not as extensive as I would like, but hopefully it will grow.

The Miniature Earth

2007-01-24T15:05:00.000-05:00

Remember the parable that uses a village of 100 people to illustrate some points about how our lives compare globally? Recently it was printed as a book "If the World Were a Village" by David Smith. It has also been redone as a slide show with music at The Miniature Earth. Thought provoking...

Regent's Review, etc.

2007-01-05T11:57:00.000-05:00

The Regents Review folder has been placed on the front of the Library's Bookmarks so that teachers and students can easily access them. Please let us know if you have additional Regents Review websites that we can include.

The staff at The Online Education Database has created a list of their top 100 favorite education blogs. The list includes weblogs on Education News, Education Policy, Learning, Technology, and Teaching - some very interesting reading.

Finally, the library showcase is currently featuring Teachers' Pets. If you would like to have your pet's photo included in the display you can bring in or email a photo to Peg. Please be sure to include your pet's name (and your own!).

Community College Library Consortium Home

2006-11-29T12:03:00.000-05:00

Community College Library Consortium Home offers written evaluations of subscription databases used by their members. The evaluation, plus many related links, can be useful when considering purchases, or even for learning more about a database you already use. Nice site!

2006-11-17T16:48:00.000-05:00

On reading "The Ongoing Struggle of Free vs. Fee" from SearchEngineWatch

Is it just me, or does the word librarian spring to mind here?

Information itself may want to be free—but an overabundance of free information is causing a shift in the value proposition associated with content. Content is king, but it seems that everyone is now a newly crowned monarch. It is no longer valuable to be a king—value now comes from organizing, and reviewing which content is most credible, has the least bias, and offers the most value to its specifically targeted user segment.
from http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3623649

more (and very much on my mind now)...
While digital immigrants are willing to purchase traditional information services, the internet is clearly the primary research tool of digital natives. Over 71% of students reported using the internet as the major source of information for recent school projects, with 73% reporting using the Internet more frequently than the library.

New website added to library's Visual Catalog

2006-09-13T09:39:00.000-04:00

is an online weights and measurements conversion website. It even has a section on computer storage conversion - conversions between bits, bytes, megabytes and other computer data storage units; something I can never remember when I need it. Sooo - now it's in the Reference window of the library's catalog. Give it a try!

2006-08-29T16:43:00.000-04:00

Many of us use the search engine Google on a regular basis, but are not aware of some of the other tools available from the company. One example is Google Sketchup, a 3D modeling program available at http://sketchup.google.com/.

Other tools offered in beta can be seen at

2006-06-06T08:58:00.000-04:00

This article from the journal School Libraries in Canada helped me to understand the possible traumatic nature of being pursued by a cyberbully.
Cyber bullying: Understanding and Preventing Online Harassment and Bullying .

I had not considered the public humiliation aspect, anathema to all of us but most especially to a young person. The combination of distance and anonimity make the online bully particularly invunerable.

Get the skinny on MySpace

2006-04-25T12:06:00.000-04:00

This is a well written overview of some of the issues involved when teens use online social networking sites such MySpace
The "MySpace Phenomenon" by Nancy E. Willard

Have questions about avian flu? Try this informative site...

2006-03-31T13:41:00.001-05:00

PandemicFlu.gov

Get Informed. Be Prepared.

One stop access to U.S. Government avian and pandemic flu information. Managed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Article compares Wikipedia and Britannica

2006-03-16T11:50:00.000-05:00

In The Kid’s All Right (And So’s the Old Man), Paula Berinstine remembers the breathless anticipation surrounding the publication of the 11th edition of Britannica and provides an interesting comparison between it and the very different growth of Wikipedia.

Trent Stamp's Take

2006-03-04T11:56:00.000-05:00

Charity Navigator is a must stop for anyone considering making a donation. Over 5,000 charities are dissected, examined and rated.

Trent Stamp's Take
CN's President Trent Stamp's blog mulls over the larger issues of charity.

Classroom blogging

2006-01-23T09:38:00.000-05:00

Interested in setting up a blog for your classroom? You could try Blogmeister, a free service from David Warlick. The following is from the Blogmeister website...

"This online blogging tool is explicitly designed with teachers and students in mind, where the teacher can evaluate, comment on, and finally publish students' blog articles in a controlled environment"

HHS gets Wikipedia entry

2006-01-20T12:35:00.000-05:00

Additional information or photos needed!

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Horseheads_High_School&oldid=35775805

Library Bookmarks update

2006-01-20T09:42:00.000-05:00

This week the Regents Review folder has temporarily moved to the front page (Regent's Exams are 1/24 - 1/27).

The link to the Raider Bulletin Online Newsletter is now the first item in the Activity Folder.

Pandia Powersearch has been added to the bottom of the first page as a sort of one stop search engine access page. Let me know what you think.

Take a look.........http://www.mybookmarks.com/public/pweidema

HHS online newsletter

2006-01-17T08:11:00.000-05:00

is now available for your perusal. Congratulations to Mrs Williams and all the students involved!

More on Wikepedia

2006-01-06T14:02:00.000-05:00

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec05/wikipedia_12-30.html

Reviewing 2005

2006-01-03T11:56:00.000-05:00

What's new...
in World Book http://www.worldbookonline.com/wb/Home?id=wn/whatsnew.htm#year

Thoughts on Wikipedia

2005-12-08T12:17:00.000-05:00

We see it in the news (A false Wikipedia 'biography' USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm), and our students are beginning to use it in reports. What is Wikipedia, and what’s the "story" behind it? Here's part of Wikipedia's own entry on "Wikipedia"

"Wikipedia is a multi-lingual Web-based free-content encyclopedia. It is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing articles to be changed by anyone with an internet connection and added by anyone with a Wikipedia member account. The project began on January 15, 2001 as a complement to the expert-written Nupedia, and is now operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia has more than 2,000,000 articles, including 850,000 in the English-language version.
Wikipedia has steadily risen in popularity, and has spawned several sister projects, such as Wiktionary, Wikibooks, and Wikinews. Articles in the Wikipedia are regularly cited by the mass media and academia, who generally praise it for its free distribution, editing, and diverse range of coverage.
Editors are encouraged to uphold a policy of "neutral point of view" under which notable perspectives are summarized without an attempt to determine an objective truth. But Wikipedia's status as a reference work has been controversial. Its open nature allows vandalism, inaccuracy, and opinion. It has also been criticised for systemic bias, preference of consensus to credentials, and a perceived lack of accountability and authority when compared with traditional encyclopedias." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

And here are some thoughtful words on what this all means for our students...

"What differentiates Wikipedia from the traditional encyclopedia it is that its articles are not written by hired "experts" (Britannica uses over 4,000 of them), but by anyone who chooses to write or contribute. No article on the topic you are searching for? Create your own! All Wikipedia articles begin, in fact, with a single contribution by a single person, who thinks he or she has some knowledge of some topic (which they pick and name) and who is motivated to contribute. Some topics never go beyond this one contribution.
"What should we teach our kids about Wikipedia? First, that it’s a source. Second, that it’s never the only source. And third, that merely searching, finding and citing the Wikipedia—or even the Britannica—does not constitute "research," even by an elementary school kid. Students need to be taught early to cross check information, to consult multiple sources, and to go to, read and cite original documents and sources, where they exist. Especially in this time and political climate, students must be taught not to necessarily believe what they hear or read—even from so called ‘experts,"—but to always look for additional, corroborating sources. (By the way, that’s the "re" in research.)"
Prensky, Marc. Search vs. Research. http://webmail.sctboces.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky-Search_vs_Research-01.pdf (PS - take a look at Marc's example of the report our students should be writing on p.6)