Week 5: LFPL's Research Tools

10b. Searched Newspapers, Courier-Journal via ProQuest, narrowed search date. Obituary was published March 18 2008. Betty Jean McMichael had four sons (and SEVEN daughters). She was well-loved and sorely missed (although it doesn't say that).

10c. Telos=no. BJftHoP=yes, with full text delay of 12 months (Academic Search Premier). CM&R=yes, since 02/2004 (ASP as above).

11a. Selected Business and Money. Selected Morningstar Investment Research Center. Searched for Vanguard Target Retirement 2020. Manager is Duane F. Kelly. Stewardship is B, overall. Morningstar overall rating is four stars.

11b. I thought I'd find Consumer Reports immediately with Consumer Information but didn't so searched alphabetically under Periodicals listing. Narrowed date range. Info found in 2009 Buying Guide, pages 294-97.

11c. Please don't open a coffee shop. How about a tea shop? There's practically no competition. Anyway. Searched Business ReferenceUSA (too obvious, no?) and customized search for 402 and "coffee shops." There are 94, give or take, that may or may not be currently serving coffee. I'd call Dunkin' Donuts the biggest competition in the 40202 zip, with Heine Bros a second (locale-wise), and then Starbucks as the giant third. I used the map to get a visual. Nice tool.

12. I expected this to be really hard. Not so much. But I am rather handy at searching and finding stuff. (Strong in some digital areas, weak in others.) I did spend more time playing around with this exercise, with the databases. Personally, I like Academic Search Premier for a complete brain-food source. True, the library likely has other professional preferences and one day when I get my librarian badge (ten year plan?) I'll know more about those. The one research tool we should be proclaiming is the Consumer Information. Particularly, links to Edmunds, Kelley and NADA guides as well as the Auto Repair Reference Center containing complete repair manuals published by Chilton. I showed this to a patron who wanted to search our catalog for a particular manual. He thought the online info was very cool and liked how he could print out the exact pages he needed to repair his steering column without having to check out the whole manual or wait for it to be sent from another branch, etc. Woo-hoo! The library rocks.