Thing 17: ELM Productivity Tools

I've known about ELM (the Electronic Library for Minnesota)for a long time, mostly in my worklife. We've relied on the "statewide databases" (as we sometimes call them) to cover some of our basic subjects, and when ELM has picked up a subscription that we had (as when they picked up the EBSCO databases), it influences how we allocate our dollars. I've used them a bit for personal things, most notably last year when my daughter had a report for school on Native Americans that she hadn't finished (due the next day, of course), and she'd left most of her notes at school. What a help the ELM databases and the Minnesota History Center website were for us! I must agree with the one commenter on the 23Things site (near the bottom): thank you to the legislators and taxpayers that make these resources possible (as I often say to students, "our tax dollars in action!) The ELM databases that I use the most are Business Source Premier (hey, I'm a business librarian!), Academic Search Premier (good for economics), ProQuest Newsstand (wonderful), and of course WorldCat (good for verification, collection development, etc.)

It's easier for me to do this Thing through work (direct access vs. proxy server access), so that's what I'm doing. [Later] OK, I tried to use the Page Composer through EBSCO, and it lost several minutes of work just now, so I'll capture what I was trying to say here instead. I've been creating web pages for some time, using programs such as HotDog, Microsoft Front Page, Liquid Matrix, and Collage (not to mention our intranet.) I'm not happy with EBSCO losing my content so quickly and completely (no Undo, no Are You Sure, etc.), but I understand the need for something like this to let people experience creating a web page for the first time.

Ah, netLibrary. We go way back. We benefit from the statewide collections, and were part of the CLIC consortium group purchase for several years (I was a netLibrary selector a few years back.) I've used the notetaking feature, all of that fun stuff. A year or two ago, my library decided to look for another option for ebooks, which we're doing, but I still find the netLibrary titles, and I've benefitted from them. Students find ebooks very convenient.

How can I use these tools? I use them every day in my work. For my job, we do searches to keep current in the field, or do environmental scanning to see what's up. As I said above, I use WorldCat weekly for collection development, referring patrons to nearby libraries, etc. Our students and faculty use these resources in their coursework, and for their research. Bravo!