Ancestry Library - Our eResource for August

The winner for last month's database ANZ Reference Centre was Nicola. Congratulations Nicola!

This month's database is Ancestry Library. It is the world’s largest source of genealogical records with over ten billion records from all over the globe. Ancestry LIbrary is only available in Hurstville and Penshurst Libraries. It contains access to records from all over the world including UK Census 1911 and earlier, Australian BDMS, electoral rolls Australia 1920 - 1980, immigration records.

The main difference between Ancestry Library and a private subscription is more personal information can be searched and uploaded onto member trees and there are a few extra databases to encourage people to subscribe.

How do you access the database?

1. Log on from the library home page: Research Databases /Scroll down Ancestry Library in Biography and History

2. Ancestry Home Page – access all the database records and often gives you many, many names. As it is American based they will come up first if you search from the home page.

3. Search by Country - easier to find a relative if nationality known.Click – Search from home page – Scroll down to the map and click on country then state e.g. Australia then New South Wales

4. Recording information: Once you have found your ancestor you may like to save the record. Ancestry has 3 options: Print - always check in print preview as may have to change to landscape, smaller margins. Record the source which is important as may need to check later.Save- use a USB to save the original record and the download to your own PC later.Share- send a digital copy to your email or relative. Will list a promotion for Ancestry and will only stay in your inbox 2 weeks. Only limited number can be sent.

Have a go at answering the following questions and email your answers to Julie by the end of the month for a chance to become our online expert for August !

1. How many English censuses are available on Ancestry?

2. What year did James Oatley come to Australia as a convict?

3. Donald George Bradman’s Rockdale address in 1930?

4. Are there Italian records on Ancestry?

5. Can Ancestry be accessed at Penshurst ?

ANZRC - Our eResource of the Month

The winner of the last month's Choice competition was Joan, who won 2 movie tickets. Congratulations Joan! The answers for the Choice competition were: 1. The corresponding online article was 'Organic Baby Food Review', which was dated 30th November, 2011. Note the discrepency between the publishing dates of the online and hardcopy article. Sometimes the articles are published at slightly different times and both the title and the contents may vary. 2. If a customer was looking for information on a recalled product, you would direct them to the 'Media and News' section and then look under the sub-heading of 'Product Recalls'. 3.Customers will only be able to access full reports if they sign in with the email and password logins. 4. To quickly browse recent articles on baby food, you would direct the customer to go to 'Reviews and Tests', then scroll down to 'Babies and Kids' and select 'Food for Kids'. You can then view the Top 10 Popular Articles and Top 10 Recent Articles.

This month's database of the month is the Australian/New Zealand Reference Centre (ANZRC). ANZRC is a full-text database that covers Australasian newspapers, magazine, refernce books, biographies and an image collection of over 592,000 photos, maps, and flags. If you would like to participate in a training session for the ANZRC database, please contact Ann. TO HAVE ANOTHER CHANCE AT WINNNG MORE MOVIE TICKETS answer the questions about the ANZRC database below: 1. What subjects would the ANZRC be useful for? 2. How would you find some photos of Julian Assange arriving at the High Court in London for his extradition hearing? 3. A customer wants to browse through articles that were published in the Australian Geographic, Issue no. 84, October-December, 2006. How would you find this information? 4. How would you find Leo Shanahan's article on Gina Rinehart that was published in The Australian on the 14/9/2011? What is the title of the article? 5. A customer wants some information on Sue Fear, the Australian mountaineer who fell to her death in 2006, whilst descending the summit of Manaslu in Nepal. You type 'Sue Fear' into the search box, but the articles that are returned have nothing to do with Sue Fear (instead you are getting articles that are relate to 'fear' or 'Sue'). What would be a good strategy to use to get more acurate 'hits'? If you can't answer these questions, you definitely need training in the ANZRC database! Even if you don't know all the answers, have a go at answering the questions anyway, and be in the running for more free movie tickets. Rayyan.

Choice Online - Our eResource of the Month

Choice Online  database provides consumer information on various products and services. Choice can only be accessed within the library, with a maximum of 10 concurrent users allowed at one time. To access a full report, customers need to login with the email address and password. Staff can access these by locating the Choice database on the Databases page of the library website, clicking on ‘Password required', and entering the password'infos'. Do not give the password/email address to the public.

Choice Online has five sections:
• Reviews and Tests – containing in-depth reports on consumer products and services 
• Blogs – where consumers can interact to discuss various topics 
• About Us – information on Choice, including how the company is run and how they test products
 • Campaigns – information on the various campaigns that Choice is involved in
• Media and News – media releases, consumer news and product recalls.
* Choice Online also features Web 2.0 features, such as Videos, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Searching Choice:

*Current reviews/tests and news/features are featured on the homepage.

*Browse subject areas by scrolling to the bottom of page and viewing hyperlinked subject categories or by passing the cursor over the tab labelled ‘Reviews and Tests’. Alternatively, utilise the A-Z guide, as it provides lists of all of the topics that Choice covers. The A-Z guide mainly lists current reports (or reports that are only a few years old); for older reports, use the search box. The 'Popular Searches' link lists the most common/popular topics that are regularly searched.

*If a customer is looking for a specific subject or article, use the search tool, which indexes articles by title and keywords.

*The search engine doesn’t use wild card symbols, so it is unnecessary to use a search term such as ‘child*’

* Single search words work better on this site than long phrases.

* Use quotation marks when searching for the title of a report or to narrow search results.

* When a search is returned, further refine results by clicking on the hyperlinked categories/sub-categories section or by utilising related hypelinked search tags.
* Don't forget the sitemap! This is a guide to specific pages on the website and may help if you are having trouble locating a certain feature of Choice.

Be aware that there are differences between the hardcopy Choice and the online Choice:
* While all of the reviews/tests are featured in both versions of Choice, not all of the news/features in the hardcopy edition are found in online Choice. On the plus side, the online Choice may contain fuller, more up-to-date reports.
* If a customer wants to find a certain article in online Choice (that has appeared in the paper mag.), the title and date of publication may slightly vary. Do not attempt to find the article using the title headlining the story; instead, use the title found in the Contents (and even then, it may slightly vary). The content of the online article may vary slightly from that in the hardcopy edition.

Answer the questions below, email Rayyan and win a prize! (most correct number of answers wins)

1. A customer has read an article in the paper-version of Choice and wants to find the same article in the online version, so that she can email it to a friend. You check the hardcopy Choice and find that the article is published in Dec/Jan. 2012. The title in the Contents is "Baby Food" and the headline of the article is "Hey Baby".Can you find the corresponding online article?

2. A customer has just heard that a certain product has been recalled and is worried because her family has been using this product. Where would you direct her to look on the Choice website?

3. A customer has been reading the introduction to a report on Camcorders, but when he tries to go into the section on "Camcorder Tips", a sign is displayed that says "Member-only content". He is annoyed and asks you why he can't access that part of the report.

4. A customer wants to quickly browse recent articles on baby food. List some of the ways that you could look for this information, without being overwhelmed by search results.

Latest Books..for Libraries & Museums May 2012

If you think any of the following books would be of interest for the professional development collection email Sue or Ann. Sometimes we can borrow the books from other libraries.

Open Conversations : public learning in libraries and museums David Carr,2011
This is a provocative book that is designed to offer courage to cultural institution administrators and staff even as it opens their eyes to the possibility that their facilities can offer more than they are. Rather than offering prescriptive answers, the author invites readers to consider museums and libraries in fresh ways.



Marketing your library : tips and tools that work
Carol Smallwood (Ed) et al, 2011
Concise, how-to case studies from practicing public, school, academic, and special librarians provide proven strategies to improve brand management, campaign organization, community outreach, media interaction, social media, and event planning and implementation. 

Bite-Sized Marketing: Realistic Solutions for the Overworked Librarian  Nancy Dowd Written and designed to reflect the way people read today, this book is structured to quickly impart simple and cost-effective ideas on marketing your library.

Defusing the angry patron : a how-to-do-it manual for librarians
Rhea Rubin,2011
To help librarians know how to react in the face of patron anger, Rubin adds five new coping strategies to the 20 basic ones she introduced in the first edition. All of them have been updated them in light of key changes, including virtual reference service and the Web 2.0 phenomenon.

 
Lean library management : eleven strategies for reducing costs and
improving customer services    John J. Huber , 2011
This new book shows you how to apply lean principles and practices--how making small, simple changes in everyday routines will reap large time- and money-saving results.

Listening to the customer   Peter Hernon ,2011This book explains how a voice-of-the-customer program for libraries can give customers the opportunity to make their opinions known, enabling libraries to develop services that meet or exceed their patrons' changing expectations.

 The Cybrarian's Web: An A-Z Guide to 101 Free Web 2.0 Tools and Other ResourcesA great starting point for learning about Web 2.0 tools that can be used to innovate and improve library services.

Do You Web 2.0?: Public libraries and social networking . Linda Berube
The author not only reviews these tools and provides practical advice and case studies on how they can be applied in the public library setting, but also recommends the policies and business cases that begin to create a new strategy for public libraries.

And in the Press..

National Library of Singapore To Open World’s First Green Library for Kids

Dogs make good listeners at the Public Library
Dwayne,the library dog visits the Bella Vista Library for scheduled appointments for children to read to him and  for monthly storytimes. This program is helping kids overcome their fear of reading aloud and fear of dogs.Dwayne is very popular and an excellent listener!

"Full-metal dust jackets and wi-fi in uni's space-age library"

The new Macquarie University Library has opened with a revolutionary storage & retrieval system and a new design adapted for the needs of modern students. Read about it in the Sydney Morning Herald 2/8/2011. More information & pictures can be found on their new library website.

The State Library of NSW is also undergoing renovations ( Sydney Morning Herald 27/7/2011) and the ' new look ' State Reference Library will reopen on 19 September 2011. More information can be found on their Renovation project blog

Designing Space for Children and Teens in Libraries and Public Places

New in the LMG professional development collection (027.625 FEI) This guide provides tips, suggestions, and guidelines on the critical issues that surround designing spaces for children and teens. It includes:

• How to select an architect or design professional



• The importance of including YA librarians in the
  design and implementation



• Information on how children and teens view
  and use space



• 20 color photos of example spaces

New in the press..

New books look to flip e-readers
Next week the pocket-sized, ultra-light ''flipback'' book will be released that will have the feel of a printed novel and the portability of an e-book. (Sun Herald 3 July 2011)

Perfect punctuation, seductive Sharepoint..new books in the professional development collection

Well not quite - but the following informative books have just been added to our professional development collection located near Rebekah's office. If you are interested in any resources for your work or professional development this collection is a great starting point!

Perfect punctuation
Everyday grammar
Berlitz English grammar handbook
Grammatically correct : the essential guide to spelling,style,usage,grammar and punctuation
The elements of style

Beginning SharePoint 2007: building team solutions with Moss 2007
004.68 SHA Non OPAC display

Contact Sue X 6120 or Ann X 6115 if you would like to make any suggestions for this collection or if you are not located in the library and would like to arrange a loan.