Primary Sources

A student comes up to you one day while you’re at your library’s service desk and tells you that her teacher has asked her to locate and use primary sources in her history research paper. How can we help this student find the information she needs? Let’s start out by defining a primary source. Primary sources generally:

• Refer to a first hand account or evidence of an event or topic
• Use the words of the witness or the initial recorder of an event
• Reflect the viewpoint of the observer as well
• May be used to produce a secondary source

Examples of primary sources include autobiographies, diaries, letters, memoirs, photographs, archival records, recordings, speeches, and newspaper or magazine articles written at the time a specific event took place. To see online examples of primary sources, the Library of Congress has a page of Primary Source Sets which includes documents, letters, maps, photographs, and sound recordings. One of the best all-around resources on primary sources is the American Library Association’s Using Primary Sources on the Web. Another really useful online resource for understanding how to use primary documents is Making Sense of Evidence.

Finding Primary Resources in Print

Okay, so now that we know a little about primary sources, how do we find them? Let’s start with the library catalog. We can take the subject our customer is researching and add “personal narratives” when we type it into the search box. We can also use the more general term “sources” in combination with our main subject. Many libraries have reference sources that collect various primary source documents. An example of this is the 22 volume Annals of America, which, in its most recent edition (2003), provides a selection of American historical documents from 1492 to 2001.

Finding Primary Resources Using Databases

Are there databases we can use? Well, let’s look at a couple of databases available through Sailor. Gale’s DISCovering Collection is designed for middle and high school students and our student needs primary sources on slavery. Let’s go to the DISCovering Collection’s basic search screen and type in “slavery” as our subject. Before we hit the search button, let’s click the box labeled “Primary Sources” and then search. Voila! Here are more than 25 primary source documents including the Germantown Mennonite Resolution against Slavery from 1688.

Let’s try a more specific Sailor subject database, namely History Resource Center: US. There are two methods by which we can locate primary sources. We can search for our subject using the Basic Search module and, after the results turn up, click on the tab labeled “Primary Sources.” Or, we can select the Advanced Search module. Using the dropdown menu, we select “subject” and type in “slavery.” We then proceed to the dropdown menu for document type, select “Primary Document, and then click on “search.” Now we have a list of more than 170 primary source documents on the subject of slavery.

Finding Primary Resources on the Web

Our student informs us that she also needs to locate some web sites with primary sources. Let’s start with the State Library Resource Center’s How Did They Live: Exploring Daily Life throughout History guide. The section entitled Primary Sources on the Web provides ready access to several of the most useful repositories of primary source material covering ancient, medieval, and modern history. Other valuable web resources offering primary resources include:

• American Journeys: Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement
• American Presidency Project – documents relating to the U.S Presidency
• Avalon Project at Yale Law School – important historical, legal, and political documents
• Core Documents of U.S. Democracy – from GPO Access
• Digital Schomburg – images and texts from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
• Making of America – Cornell University Library – primary source materials in American social history from before the Civil War through Reconstruction.
• Women Working, 1800-1930 – digitized material from Harvard University’s library and museum

Citing Primary Sources

The American Library Association’s Using Primary Sources on the Web contains information on both evaluating primary source web sites and citing web sites. The Library of Congress offers a guide for teachers on how to cite primary sources on its Citing Primary Sources page. This site offers guidance on both Chicago and MLA style.

Using primary sources allows students to use their analytical skills and knowledge of history to better comprehend historical events and personalities. If you need any assistance in locating primary sources, please feel free to contact the Enoch Pratt Free Library/ State Library Resource Center.

What resources do you suggest for someone trying to improve their math skills?

One very good set of books is the Barron’s E-Z series (which seems to have replaced the Easy Way series), for example Barron’s E-Z Math or Barron’s E-Z Algebra. The Teach Yourself Visually series has also started to publish books about math, including Teach Yourself Visually Algebra and Teach Yourself Visually Calculus. These book made their name by publishing easy-to-use computer books with full-color pictures showing each step in a process.

As far as web sites go, Maths Is Fun is one of the better ones. It’s a British site (hence “maths” instead of “math.”), and it has simple tutorials to teach people about all kinds of math problems. There are also worksheets and games to help you practice what you’ve learned. The site is geared toward children, but it works well for adults too.

One other great website is Purple Math, which was started by a former math teacher and has tutorials on algebra and word problems.

If you’re looking for more assistance on working with math problems for customers, check out SLRC’s Math for Librarians online course!

I’m interested in learning about award-winning children’s books beyond the Caldecott and Newbury awards. What other awards are there?

The American Library Association’s Association for Library Service to Children awards the following:

Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award
The Arbuthnot award honors an author, critic, librarian, historian, or teacher of children's literature, of any country, who then presents a lecture at a winning host site.

Batchelder Award
The Batchelder Award is given to an American publisher for a children's book considered to be the most outstanding of those books originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States, and subsequently translated into English and published in the United States.

Belpré Award
The Belpré Medal honors a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose works best portray, affirm, and celebrate the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.

Carnegie Medal
The Carnegie Medal honors the producer of the most outstanding video production for children released during the preceding year.

Coretta Scott King Book Awards
Given to African American authors and illustrator for outstanding inspirational and educational contributions, the Coretta Scott King Book Award titles promote understanding and appreciation of the culture of all peoples and their contribution to the realization of the American dream of a pluralistic society.

Geisel Award
The Theodor Seuss Geisel Medal honors the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished contribution to the body of American children’s literature known as beginning reader books published in the United States during the preceding year.

John Steptoe Awards for New Talent
These books affirm new African American talent and offer visibility to excellence in writing or illustration at the beginning of a career as a published book creator.

Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production
The Odyssey Award will be awarded annually to the best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States.

Schneider Family Book Awards
The Schneider Family Book Awards honor an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.

Sibert Informational Book Medal
The Sibert Medal honors the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished informational book published during the preceding year.

Wilder Award
The Wilder Medal honors an author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made, over a period of years, a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.

And last but not least don’t forget the Notable Children's Notable Lists! Each year the Association for Library Service to Children identifies the best of the best in children's books, recordings, videos, and computer software.

Who are the People in Your State Library Resource Center

Meet Andrea Snyder!
Grants Collection Manager
Enoch Pratt Free Library/State Library Resource Center


What do you do?
I’m the assistant manager of the Social Science and History Department and the manager of the Grants Collection, which is a nonprofit resource center. I coordinate and teach a series of classes for nonprofits on fundraising and management issues both at the library and around the state.

How did you get here?
I had an epiphany my sophomore year of college that I wanted to be a librarian. It didn’t come completely out of the blue as I’d always been involved with various libraries but I had never thought about it as a career choice before then. Right after completing my MLS at the University of Buffalo I moved here to Baltimore to start working at Pratt. 6 years later I’m still here and loving it!

What’s your favorite thing about your job?
I love the daily interactions I have with people. It makes my day watching a smile light up a customers face when they have the “a ha” moment.

What’s a book that you didn’t expect to like – but did?
Maus by Art Spiegelman was my first venture into graphic novels. I’ll admit that I went in with some preconceived notions about graphic novels but they were completely gone by the time I was finished.

What is your favorite SLRC program, service, or training?
I love that we take our trainings and programs on the road to libraries all over the state.
It’s great to be able to go out and actually meet the library staff around the state that you’ve been speaking to via e-mail & on the phone. I also learn a lot from the other libraries when I’m “out on the road” to bring back here to Pratt.

What do you do when you’re not reading?
Music is a big part of my life. I’m in a handbell choir and also play the violin. If I’m not doing something music you might find me watching a hockey game or plotting my next road trip to visit friends.

Thursday Review: Stopping Identity Theft

Stopping Identity Theft: 10 Easy Steps to Security by Scott Mitic (2009)

Stop and think for a moment. We check our email constantly. We surf the Web daily. We stay in touch with friends and colleagues using social networking services. When we need an infusion of cash, we stop at the ATM machine. We pay for our purchases with a credit card. We use a medical insurance card for an appointment with our doctor or to pay for a prescription. Any of these situations could potentially provide an opportunity for identity theft.

Scott Mitic is the CEO of TrustedID, a company that specializes in identity theft protection. Mitic begins his book by focusing on how identity thieves acquire your personal information. Did you know that there are at least six items from your mail that a thief can use to steal your identity? Mitic’s first recommendation is that we obtain a copy of our credit report at least once a year and check it thoroughly for any unauthorized activity. Have you ever received an email from a foreign country informing you that you will be the recipient of a huge sum of money if you just respond with some personal information? Mitic discusses this and other email scams. He also covers the risks of both online and offline shopping. What should we do when we’re away on vacation? Are my kids at risk for identity theft when they’re using the computer? Mitic furnishes savvy advice for these concerns as well.

So what can we do if someone has stolen our identity? Mitic provides us with several essential first steps including freezing your credit, requesting fraud alerts from credit reporting agencies, and reporting the crime to police and financial institutions. He also points out that the more quickly we identify and respond to a case of identity theft, the less money we’re likely to lose in the long run. Stopping Identity Theft is an important book and essential reading for everyone living in the brave new world of technology and the Internet.

I heard on the news that the NAACP is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, and I'm looking for information about them. What do you have?

The NAACP is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year! In conjunction with national anniversary, the local Baltimore Branch of the NAACP is also celebrating its 97th anniversary. The Enoch Pratt Library is currently co-sponsoring an exhibit of the local branch’s memorabilia and photographs at our Central Library. After exploring the exhibit, you are invited to have a look at the exhibit booklet that presents a brief pictorial timeline of the branch’s history.

If you are looking more specifically for information on the national history such as the organization’s beginnings and global impact, one good place to start would be with the newly published NAACP 100: Celebrating a Century 100 Years in Pictures which gives a thorough and moving account of the organization through its images and words. The African American Department can also help with finding information in the vertical file and in our collection.

Thursday Review: Stone's Fall

Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears (2009)

When journalist Matthew Braddock attends the funeral of Madame Robillard, a woman he had met many years ago, he runs into a lawyer who has been instructed to deliver a package of documents to him. For Braddock, the funeral and the documents bring back memories of the events of the time when he knew Madame Robillard, then known as Elizabeth, Lady Ravenscliff.

In 1909 London, Braddock was employed by Lady Ravenscliff, the widow of the wealthy industrialist John Stone, who had just fallen to his death from his office window. On the surface, Braddock is meant to be writing a biography of John Stone. Discreetly, he is to search for the “never previously acknowledged” child of Stone’s mentioned in his will. However, what appears as a straightforward (though difficult) task is not what it seems to be. Braddock keeps uncovering important facts which had not been disclosed to him– the financial state of Stone’s empire is not nearly as solid as the shareholders have been led to believe, and there is evidence of shady dealings within it that were outside of Stone’s control. Also, Stone’s death looks like it may not have necessarily been an accident. Braddock slowly comes to find that he is being manipulated, as each layer he uncovers reveals more lies and secrets. In the end, all is revealed to him – seemingly. It will take two documents detailing two more eras - Paris 20 years earlier and Venice 20 years before that - before every part of the puzzle makes sense.

Like he did with his previous book An Instance of the Fingerpost, Pears has written an intricate historical novel for people who love literary fiction and also those who appreciate a really good mystery.

How can I promote Banned Books Week at my library?

Banned Books Week is a national campaign that celebrates the freedom to read. It promotes Intellectual Freedom in schools and libraries throughout the United States. The Humanities Department created a How-to-Guide, Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read, to raise awareness of censorship and to support the freedom of choice. The guide contains information on banned and challenged books and ways to get involved.

The American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom is a great resource for display ideas, activities, free downloads, and links for other materials for Banned Books Week.

Another good resource is the Official Banned Books Week web site. Under the section titled, “What You Can Do”, you will find suggestions on contests, discussion forums, and films on books that are banned.

The How-to-Guide and websites will provide you with the tools necessary for a successful Banned Books Week at your library.

A customer is interested in graphic novels – where should I start?

Over the last decade or so, the interest in graphic novels has exploded, and there’s been an equal increase in the number of published titles. Graphic novels aren’t just for super heroes anymore; they have grown to cover as may genres as found in any literature. So, when you’re helping a customer look for graphic novels, or even someone just looking for a good read, remember the wide range of options. You can find science fiction, horror, westerns, war stories, as well as autobiographical and literary graphic novels that are as emotionally complex and satisfying as works in more traditional mediums. There are also many long running series of manga, the Japanese term for comics, that are very popular.

When doing reader’s advisory it’s also important to take into account the customer’s reading level. As more and more styles and subjects are covered, there's been an equal increase in works with mature themes and art. Getting to know the titles will help you give good recommendations.

There are a lot of great graphic novels beyond the familiar names published by Marvel (Spider-man, X Men, Fantastic Four), and DC (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman). ALA also has a yearly list of the best graphic novels for teens. Check out the list below to learn about some of the best works out there:

• 500 Essential Graphic Novels : The Ultimate Guide by Gene Kannenberg
  
• The 101 Best Graphic Novels by Stephen Weiner
• The Librarian's Guide to Graphic Novels for Children and Tweens by David S. Serchay
• Graphic Novels: A Genre Guide to Comic Books, Manga, and More by Michael Pawuk
• Manga : The Complete Guide by Jason Thompson

Curious Librarian and Job Seeking

Enjoy this video giving advice for job seekers!

What are some tips for creating fiction booklists?

Annotated book lists are an important tool for readers’ advisory work. They are an excellent way to promote and market your library’s collection and to provide reading suggestions to library customers. Here are some tips to get you started:

• Choose a topic for your list that reflects reader interests. Identify the intended audience.
• Choose a topic that is broad enough so that you have an adequate number of titles for the list.
• May sure that you have enough copies of any title that you are considering for inclusion on the list.
• Annotations should focus on the story line and on the book’s appeal to the reader.
• They should be written in the active rather than the passive voice.
• Annotations should be brief, concise, and descriptive. They should pique the reader’s interest in the title.
• Eighteen to twenty-four titles is a useful number of titles to include.
• Include no more than one book by an author.
• If you own a title in print as well as in other formats like CD, Playaway, or downloadable e-book or audio Mention the variety of formats that you have available in the annotation.
• For each annotation include the author, title, publication date, number of pages, and the call number or location in your collection. Arrange the annotations in alphabetical order by author.
• Choose a catchy title for your list that will arouse the reader’s interest in the books that you’ve chosen.
• Proofread your list carefully. Enlist the aid of a co-worker who hasn’t seen the list previously.
• Use your completed list as a basis for a book display. Include the list with the display.
• Make sure to include your list on your library’s Web site to increase the audience for the list.

You can find an extensive list of booklists, both fiction and non-fiction, on the Pratt Library website under Pratt Recommends Booklists.

Who are the People in Your State Library Resource Center

Meet John Damond!

Business, Science, and Technology

Department Manager

Enoch Pratt Free Library/

State Library Resource Center

What do you do?
I’m the manager of the Business, Science, and Technology Department at SLRC, and I’m also the measurement coordinator for the Library. The people who fund us have begun asking for different types of information on how we serve the public, and I am the person whose job it is to research, recommend, and coordinate the collection of new types of statistics.

How did you get here?

I worked in bookstores for many years before I decided to go to library school. I realized that I enjoyed helping people find information (many bookstore customers were using this giant chain store as a library), so becoming a librarian seemed like the ideal career move (though I’m still waiting for Bob Dylan to call me up and ask me to go on tour with him).

What’s your favorite thing about your job?

As a librarian, the most rewarding thing I do is give someone a GED study guide or finding information about a disease or disorder a customer has been diagnosed with. I like helping people in general, but cases like this are extra special. As a manager, I enjoy developing and implementing new ideas as well as assisting new staff grow and develop their library skills.

What’s a book that you didn’t expect to like – but did?
I can’t think of a specific title that fits this description. I did, however, have an experience when I read a book that I thought would be okay but turned out to be extraordinary. In 1992 I had the opportunity to go to Amsterdam, so I thought it would be neat to take a copy of Anne Frank’s diary to read on the plane to get me in the mood. Well, after reading the book and visiting her hiding place, I became totally obsessed with her story for several years, and I now have an entire shelf of books devoted just to Anne Frank and her family. Don’t start me talking about it, though, because I won’t shut up.

What is your favorite SLRC program, service, or training?

When I first started working at SLRC (in the late 1900s), one of my tasks as the New Guy in the department was answering reference questions from county libraries through MILO. It allowed me to explore all the nooks and crannies of this huge library collection, and it reminds me of the show The History Detectives on PBS. I still love getting difficult or weird questions and wading through all of our sources to find an answer.

What do you do when you’re not reading?
I’m a musician, so I play music a lot. I’m in an African drumming group, and I’m involved in a band with two other SLRC librarians (called the Footnotes), which plays concerts in library branches around Baltimore.

I have a customer who wants to do research in old newspapers. How can I find out what is available at the State Library Resource Center?

The web page of the Periodicals Department of the State Library Resource Center (SLRC) is a good place to start!

Scroll down the page until you see the heading "What We Have." Under that heading click on "Newspapers." If you are doing local newspaper research scroll down the page until you see the heading "Local Newspapers on Microfilm." You can search Baltimore City Newspapers by title or dates of publication. These tables are completely up-to-date and accurate. You can search the SLRC collection of other Maryland papers from around the state by title, by county, and by city. These tables are currently being updated. They are for the most part accurate, but I would give a call to the SLRC Periodicals Department (410-396-5451) before arriving there just to verify that a particular paper in a particular date range is indeed on the shelf.

If you are doing research using historical papers from out-of-town, look under the heading "Out-Of-Town Newspapers on Microfilm."

The SLRC Periodicals Department has microfilm reader/printers that you can use to read these papers. The staff will be happy to teach you how to operate these machines.

I’ve never read a science fiction book. What do you recommend to get to know the genre?

Science Fiction is such a popular genre that staff members of the Fiction and Young Adult Department have created a How-To Guide, Out-Of-This-World Reading: Science Fiction and Fantasy, on that subject!

In the guide we discuss the different subgenres of both science fiction and fantasy and give links to the websites of authors writing in them. We also include links to web resources for authors and series, readalikes, online fiction, book reviews, and directories of where stories and novels can be found. The “Best Books” section is especially helpful for people beginning to read in the genres. In that section there are lists of award winners, the classics in the genres, and reading suggestions for everyone from the novice to the science fiction expert.

Happy reading!

A student needs to write a book report. What resources are out there to help them format it correctly?

Book report writing can be pretty daunting for the students new to it. There are a number of Web sites to help them. Remember that Maryland AskUsNow! offers help for students 24/7!

The Student Guide to Book Reports created by the Lakewood (Ohio) Public Library gives a clear, step by step explanation of the book report process. Also, the OWL (Online Writing Lab) at Purdue University has a section designated helping students in Grades 7-12 with their writing.

How to Write Book Reports by Dawn Sowa is an excellent paper resource on the subject.

Review Thursday: Non-fiction Audiobook

The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship by Jeffrey Zaslow (2009, unabridged, 11 sound discs)

Jeffrey Zaslow is a Wall Street Journal columnist and co-author of the Last Lecture. In 2003, he wrote a column titled Moving on: Staying in Touch: One More Thing That Women are Better at Than Men. He received hundreds of responses but one email sparked his interest and inspired him to explore the 40 year friendship of 11 girls from Ames, Iowa.

Zaslow’s book captures the trials and tribulations of their enduring friendship while interspersing factual/statistical information regarding the differences between male and female friendships, father-daughter relationships, and the purpose of relationships.

Although the book has photographs, the girls are easily distinguishable with Andrea Gallo’s voice giving each one her own persona. The narrator is clear and even paced with a pleasant tone.

For audiobook clubs, I would recommend listening to both Rebecca Well’s The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship for an interesting comparison and discussion.

This audiobook may be previewed on Audible.com or Barnes & Noble.

Sailor Database Review: Gale Virtual Reference Library

Gale Virtual Reference Library makes available online the full text of 25 great reference sources. The list of sources available in the Sailor database are:

• Africa: An Encyclopedia for Students , 4v, 2002
• American Decades , 10v, 2001
• American Decades Primary Sources , 10v, 2004
• American Eras , 8v, 1997 history
• Ancient Civilizations Reference Library , 3v, 2000
• Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Popular Musicians Since 1990 , 2v, 2004
• Chemical Elements: From Carbon to Krypton , 3v, 2006
• Colonial America Reference Library , 6v, 2000
• Countries and Their Cultures , 4v, 2001
• Early Civilizations in the Americas Reference Library , 4v, 2005
• Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion , 3v, 2005
• Encyclopedia of Food and Culture , 3v, 2003
• Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World , 2v, 2004
• Encyclopedia of Religion , 2nd ed., 15v, 2005
• Encyclopedia of World Cultures , 10v, 1996
• Encyclopedia of World Cultures: Supplement , 2002
• Endangered Species , 2nd ed., 3v, 2004
• Environmental Encyclopedia , 3rd ed., 2v, 2003
• Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of Foods and Recipes of the World , 4v, 2002
• Middle Ages Reference Library , 5v, 2001
• Middle East Conflict Reference Library , 4v, 2006
• Renaissance and Reformation Reference Library , 6v, 2002
• UXL Encyclopedia of Biomes , 3v, 2000
• UXL Encyclopedia of Drugs and Addictive Substances , 5v, 2006
• Witchcraft in America , 2001

The entire list may be searched by keyword or the search maybe limited to a specific source. A description of each source is available by clicking on the title. For each source, you also have access to an e-index—just click on the appropriate entry and you will go directly to the page with that information.

This database is perfect for those customers who are searching for information on a specific subject and cannot get into the library to access these sources normally available only in print form.

Review Thursday: Quick Picks Nonfiction

Do you have customers that are looking for information on how to get into the health care field? Here are some quick picks to help them investigate their options.

Workplace Readiness for Health Occupations by Bruce J. Colbert (2006)

Assess your current work skills to determine goals and create a plan for success in the work world. Chapters on communication and the job search will be useful to first time job seekers.

The Everything Guide to Careers in Health Care by Kathy Quan (2007)

Learn about the wide variety of health care careers available, including occupational areas most in demand, training needed, and how to determine what area is best for you. The job search process is also detailed.

Careers for Health Nuts & Others Who Like to Stay Fit by Blythe Camenson (2004)

Showcasing a variety of careers for individuals interested in health, this book covers a wide range of health related careers such as personal trainers, occupational therapists, and dieticians. Information on salaries, working conditions, and opportunities for professional advancement are also included.

Sailor Database Review: World Book Online Reference Center

For years, one of the essential ready reference print sources, World Book Online Reference Center takes it a few steps further. There are four versions available, which enable different ages to access information that is appropriate for all ages and ability levels.

• World Book Kids: based on World Books Discovery Encyclopedia, this version offers easy-to-read articles, images, web sites, selected and edited for the younger elementary school age group. Also included are many interactive games, activities, and teacher resources.
  
  
• World Book Student: the redesigned and upgraded version of the World Book Online Reference Center. This version is aimed at the elementary and middle school student and contains all the articles from the World Book Encyclopedia (print version), a biography section, a dictionary and atlas, an extensive multimedia collection, as well as many editor selected web sites. There is a great section called How To Do Research which discusses research skills for students and also research skills for educators. Students can save the content from any search results page by checking the box next to the item and clicking on “Save to My Backpack.”
  
  
• World Book Advanced: Designed for high school and college students, this version contains much of what is in the World Book Student version plus thousands of ebooks (both fiction and nonfiction), a primary source database, pathfinders and more. The student can search for information in the fully integrated single search mode, or can opt for the advanced search and limit their search to ebooks or primary sources, etc. There is a citation builder available, and all searches can be saved to My Research.
  

• Enciclopedia Estudiantil Hallazgos: This is the Student Discovery Encyclopedia in Spanish. It is organized so information can be found by clicking on the first letter of the article title.

Review Thursday: Children's Books

The Great Nursery Rhyme Disaster by David Conway (2009)

Little Miss Muffet is not only bored with her nursery rhyme, but she can do without the scary spider. To add a bit of variety to her life, she sets off to see if she can find a new rhyme that will suit her better. Instead she wreaks havoc on, among others, “Hickory Dickory Dock”, “Sing a Song of Sixpence”, and “Hey, Diddle Diddle”. None of them agree with her idea of a comfortable, painless, classy rhyme and the ensuing chaos sends her back to her tuffet. This will appeal to sophisticated Mother Goose graduates (1-3rd grade) who will appreciate a parody of familiar Mother Goose rhymes or for those who might be in need of a lesson in the grass not always being greener on the other side.

The Three Little Tamales by Eric A. Kimmel (2009)

Taking the advice of a runaway tortilla, three little tamales escape before they get eaten at the local Texas restaurant. Building their homes out of, respectively, sagebrush, cornstalks, and cactus each has a run in with Senor Lobo. Just as in the original, The Three Little Pigs, the Big Bad Wolf gets his just desserts and the audience gets a nice sampling of Spanish words, defined in a glossary at the beginning of the book. Variants such as this one keep folklore vibrant. They are extremely useful to teachers looking for multiple versions, as well as just being a flavorful addition that begs to be shared with a group.

Mascot to the Rescue by Peter David (2008)

Sixth grader Josh Miller is obsessed with the Captain Major comic books, and not only because they are so exciting. He has begun to notice that everything that happens to the superhero’s Mascot happens to him. When he finds out that Mascot is going to be killed off in the series, he stops at nothing to try to reach the creator of the Captain Major series so that he can save Mascot and, he is convinced, his own life. The clever design incorporates different typefaces to relate Josh Mascot’s adventures and includes comic pages within the text. Perfect for comic/graphic novel fans who are being pushed (by adults) to read novels, this is a rip-roaring page turner that no boy (and few girls) will turn down.

Sailor Database Review: Health & Wellness Resource Center

Looking for an overview of Marfan Syndrome for a school assignment? Have a friend who is looking for alternative treatments for her migraine headaches? Need to know the possible side effects of that new drug you started taking? Have a student looking for case studies on bipolar disorders?

Kate Niemcyzk, the consumer health librarian at the Enoch Pratt Free Library/State Library Resource Center, reviews Gale’s Health & Wellness Resource Center to see if it can help you answer those questions and others. The database is crammed full of useful information While it has great information, it also comes with some problem areas.

The Home page gives you a variety of ways to search. There are both tabs and boxes. The most comprehensive search is to use either the “Advanced Search” tab at the top or the “search” box. A search in either of these places will bring up results divided by source: magazines and journals, videos with their text, drug & herb information, and overviews from books. In search, you can limit to full-text articles, consumer information and refereed publications.

Problem Area: The results displays are limited to only 10 items per page. Any items you mark on a page to be kept will be lost unless you “Update Marked List” before you leave that page—even if it is to read one of your hits on that page.

The “Diseases and Conditions” tab allows you to alphabetically access the wonderful overviews found in the Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine. The entries are arranged in a useful way for assignments: definition & description, causes & symptoms, diagnosis, treatment & prognosis.
Problem Area: There don’t appear to be any “see references”. For example, I was looking for high blood pressure, and did not find it. I found any entry for hypertension. There wasn’t anything telling me at high blood pressure to “see” hypertension.



The “Alternative Medicine” tab allows you to alphabetically access the overviews found in the Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine. These articles include much of the same information as the articles in Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine with the addition of alternative medicine’s view of the cause. Both traditional allopathic treatments and alternative/complementary treatments are included.

Problem Area: Again, no “see references.”

Drugs & Herbal Remedies can be searched through either a box or tab. Typing in an herb, prescription or over-the-counter drug by generic or brand name, brings up a list of hits from mostly print sources clearly showing their publication dates. The sources include Detailed Drug Information for the Consumer, Drug Information for Consumers from PDRhealth.com, and The PDR for Herbal Medicines.

Problem Area: A search by drug name usually brings up a long list of mostly irrelevant hits (but the relevant hits will be at the top.) The results displays are limited to only 10 items per page. There is no “fuzzy” search, so if you spelled the name wrong, it will not offer you any alternative spellings.

The Health & Wellness Resource Center also includes a dictionary (which unlike the dictionary in MedlinePlus, does not offer alternative spellings if you don’t get any hits), a directory of hospitals, organizations, journals, and programs, a list of trusted Web sites, and a list of health assessment tools and calculators.

I expect to most often use the overviews in the Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine and the Search function. Many times the overviews in the print version of the Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine have been perfect for both students working on assignments and for people just starting to research their own newly diagnosed condition. The Search function will be useful for people who are interested in looking for articles or doing more in depth research—both students who need more than an overview and customers looking for information about a disease or condition for personal reasons.

Thursday Reviews: Young Adult Sci-Fi Quick Picks

The Supernaturalist by Eoin Colfer (2004)

Escaping from a cruel orphanage that uses children as test subjects, Cosmo Hill has a near-death experience during which he sees strange blue creatures which seem to feed on the life force of humans. He is then saved by a group of people who call themselves the Supernaturalists and have taken on the task of trying to eradicate the blue “parasites” to protect the city.

Escape from Memory by Margaret Peterson Haddix (2003)

Thinking she has nothing to hide, Kira lets her friends hypnotize her at a party and suddenly remembers herself fleeing a war-torn country with her mother, who is speaking a strange language. Now that these memories have been revealed, Kira and her mother are in serious danger.

Flip by David Lubar (2003)

Underachiever Ryan and his perfectionist twin sister Taylor find alien disks in the woods, which when used properly give them the power of famous people from the past. This results in a lot of fun but ends up getting them into more trouble than ever.



Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini (2004)

Considered a dweeb at school and ignored by the girl of his dreams, Jeremy Heere receives help from a “squip”, a supercomputer in pill form that gives him constant instructions on how to be cool. He quickly becomes popular but finds that having a computer bossing him around has a definite dark side.

Sailor Database Review: Discovering Collections

Discovering Collection is a Thompson Gale database aimed at middle and high school students. It is designed to introduce students to the strategies for conducting research and obtaining reliable information on a topic. The database provides aggregated links to full text sources on a broad variety of topics. The overwhelming majority of returns are articles generated specifically for this database or for other proprietary Gale resources.

Students can explore a subject either by following one of six “topic trees” (Cultures, Geography, Literature, Science, U.S. History, World History), or, alternatively, by performing basic or advanced searches. The basic search returns results using both keyword and subject searches, and the advanced search offers greater precision through the use of Boolean operators. Even basic returns can be limited by content level and content type. Articles in the database are available in written form or as audio MP3s. Discovering Collection would be useful for students who are required to do research on topics for which paper resources are limited and who are not permitted to use internet resources.

Review Thursdays: Quick Fiction Picks

Even Money by Dick Francis and Felix Francis (2009)

Ed Talbot, a bookmaker working the English racing circuit, is shocked when a stranger introduces himself as Ed’s father – who Ed had been told died 30 years ago. When Ed witnesses his father’s fatal stabbing, he finds himself in a race to save his own life.

Woman with Birthmark: An Inspector Van Veeteran Mystery by Hakan Nesser (2009)

Swedish Police Chief Inspector Van Veeteran and his team are bewildered by the murder of a man shot twice in the heart and twice below the belt. Their frustration increases when a second victim suffers the same fate.

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See (2009)

It’s 1937 in Shanghai and sisters May and Pearl are leading lives of glamour and freedom. All that changes abruptly when their father announces he’s arranged marriages for them with Chinese businessmen who live in California.

Sailor Database Review: Kids Infobits

Kids Infobits is a Thompson Gale database aggregating links to information in a variety of knowledge domains. Sources include online encyclopedia entries, entries in almanacs and other ready reference resources, articles in periodicals such as Highlights for Children or Science News for Kids, and entries created specifically for Kids Infobits. The database is intended as a tool to teach elementary school students the rudiments of online research and to provide vetted sources of factual information.

Kids Infobits would be useful for students who are required to do research on topics for which paper resources are limited and who are not permitted to use internet resources. Topics can be browsed from hierarchically arranged pages of topics (e.g. People → Scientists and Inventors → Niels Bohr) or searched by both keyword and a controlled vocabulary subject guide. The advanced search page provides an opportunity to gain Boolean search skills, but no explanation of Boolean operators for the uninitiated.

Review Thursday: The Old Cape Magic

That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo (2009)

As Richard Russo’s novel That Old Cape Magic opens late middle-aged Jack Griffin, the screenwriter turned college professor main character, is on his way to a summer wedding on Cape Cod with his father’s ashes in an urn in the trunk of his car. It ends a year later with two weddings, and becomes the story of Griffin’s own marriage to his wife, Joy, as well as that of his parents, a bitter, eternally dissatisfied academic couple, and the impending marriage of his daughter, Laura. (Russo indicated in an interview that both of his daughters had gotten married while he was writing the novel, and he planned to pay for their weddings with the proceeds from the writing of this novel.)

It’s a novel about happiness, which is always on the horizon, never where Griffin is standing. It’s a paean to our common neuroses, written for people who are terrified of becoming their parents. That Old Cape Magic is bittersweet, humorous, affecting, insightful, and wise, and conveys a good sense of place. Fans of Russo’s work will delight in his latest. Newcomers should be drawn in by the Pulitzer Prize winner’s power as a novelist.

Sailor Database Review: General OneFile

Gale’s General OneFile brings to your customers’ fingertips an impressive array of materials ranging from newsletters to major national newspapers in the United States and from popular and business magazines to peer-reviewed academic journals. There are 11,000 titles in all and more than 6,300 full-text titles. The database provides archival coverage back to 1980.

Database users can search both across and within publications. Both basic and advanced search options are provided in a highly user-friendly manner. In browsing publications, users can limit their browses to materials in one of four languages, from one of 49 countries, by general publication subject, by publication format, by target audience, to full-text publications, and to peer-reviewed publications. Database users can also browse an alphabetical list of highly specific subjects to find articles.

General OneFile users may set up RSS feeds on particular subjects with articles delivered either to their email accounts or appearing on their individually configured homepages.

Sailor Database Review: Custom Newspapers

Gale's Infotrac Custom Newspapers database, available through Sailor, makes available to your patrons full-text transcriptions of several medium circulation dailies, which mix marginally adequate national coverage with excellent regional coverage, such as the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, the Star Tribune (Minneapolis), the San Francisco Chronicle, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Miami Herald, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Detroit Free Press. The database does not include full access (though a few columns are available) to any of the large-circulation national newspapers -- USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal -- but is a valuable supplement to a national newspaper database (eg. ProQuest “National Newspapers”). Archival coverage extends back as far as 1980 for some of the database newspapers.

Conservative news consumers will welcome access to the Washington Times and the New York Post while liberals will enjoy the availability of the Independent (London) and the Guardian (London). English-language and Spanish-language newspapers are available from 11 countries, and the database is especially strong in its collection of papers from the United Kingdom. “Custom Newspapers” also includes a wealth of local papers from the United States. Papers local to Maryland are the Capital (Annapolis, 2/1/2009-current) and the Frederick News-Post (12/31/2004-current).

Users may search across publications as well as within publications. Publications can be browsed alphabetically, by country of publication, by language, by target audience (general or trade), or by publication subject (e.g. law). Browsing within countries by state or city of publication would be a useful feature if it were provided but, unfortunately, it is not. Database users may set up RSS feeds on news topics with articles delivered either to their email accounts or appearing on their individually configured homepages.

Review Thursday: Nonfiction

Film Art: An Introduction, 8th edition, by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson (2008)

Anyone who believes that film is a true art, whether student or serious viewer, will gain new insights into “the seventh art.”

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson are pioneers in the teaching of film. Their writing is clear and precise. The first edition of Film Art was published in 1979, and now film students and cinephiles have the Eighth Edition of this classic text. They clarify such misunderstood terms as mise-en-scene and explain how to distinguish between “story” and “plot.”

The order of the text has been honed over the years for optimal use. The authors start with the basics of production, distribution and exhibition of different types of film. They then move to an extensive examination of film form, drawing on The Wizard of Oz and Citizen Kane for illustrations, and the finer points of filmmaking. The core of the book is an examination of that all-encompassing thing, mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound, always with good examples. While the fictional feature film is emphasized, documentaries, experimental, and animated films are not slighted.

The text is capped with analyses of 10 films of various genres and nationalities and an appendix for students on how to write a critical analysis of a film.

A short, final section of the book, which covers “Film art and Film History,” a good preview for the equally fine companion volume, Film History: An Introduction.

The icing on the cake is the extremely useful extras – a DVD with examples and commentary, suggestions for further study (“Where to Go From Here”) at the end of each chapter, sidebars within each chapter (“A Closer Look”), recommended DVD supplements and a glossary.

The candles on the cake are a Web site for the text and the blog that Bordwell and Thompson maintain, Observations on film art and Film Art, which is always being updated with useful links and articles.

Several customers have been asking me for help...

...proof-reading their papers. I’m not always sure about grammar and want to refer them to some really good sources. What would be good to recommend to them?

There are a number of good sources for English grammar and style. Remember that it is always wise to have someone else proofread your writing, as you might only see what you meant and not what you have actually written. There are some good Web sites to consult, and there are books with clear examples as well.

Where do I put that comma? A good place to start is Rutgers University’s Guide to Grammar and Style. Arranged in an accessible, alphabetical way, it is easy to use and clearly written. With its emphasis on style and clearly written English, Strunk and White’s Elements of Style is probably the best known guide to English usage. It is also available in updated paper editions at most libraries.

Are you taking a brake or a break? When it comes to which word to use and which phrase is correct, a great site is Washington State University’s Common Errors in English. Arranged alphabetically, each word or phrase has a link to an explanation.


The Little, Brown Handbook, now in its 10th edition, is an excellent paper source for grammar, style, and manuscript writing.

Review Thursday: Children's Books

The Crossroads by Chris Grabenstein (2008)

Eleven-year-old Zack Jennings moves to Connecticut with his father and new stepmother. On their property is an old oak tree that harbors ghosts. The ghosts are part of a bad accident that happened years ago involving a bus and car. One ghost decides to kill Zack. Can Zack save himself? Pair this book with Skeleton Man by Joseph Bruchac for a double dose of terror!


The Problem with the Puddles by Kate Feiffer (2009)

The problem with the Puddles is that they don’t agree on anything. Their daughter, Baby, has two other names. On the way back to the city (from their country home), the Puddles realize that they’ve left their two dogs, Big Sally and Little Sally, behind. Should they go back for the dogs? Can Mr. and Mrs. Puddle agree on anything? A good companion book to read would be The Elevator Family by Douglas Evans.


11 Birthdays by Wendy Mass (2009)

Amanda and Leo were both born on the same day. They’ve always celebrated their birthdays together. This year, though, they are celebrating their eleventh same-day birthdays separately. It seems that Leo made some unkind remarks about Amanda on their tenth birthday. The day of their latest birthday begins to repeat itself over and over again. Can Amanda and Leo get along and stop their eleventh birthday from reoccurring? (For those adults who saw Groundhog Day with Bill Murray, this is a pint-sized version). Another funny book about birthdays is The Big One-Oh by Dean Pitchford.

Sailor Database Review: Using Gale’s History Resource Center

A student comes into your branch looking for material on women’s suffrage. Her teacher wants her to use books and magazine articles for her research paper. You readily locate several books using your catalog. Now what? Here’s where Gale’s History Resource Center stands out. Its resources include reference sources, magazines and journals, current news stories, primary sources, maps, and multimedia. Magazines and scholarly journals covered by this database include American Heritage, American History, History Today, Journal of African American History, and Journal of Women’s History.

The History Resource Center is divided into two parts: History Resource Center: World and History Resource Center: US. The search interface allows us to search both databases simultaneously and makes it easy for us to search for either individuals or subjects. Another option is using the advanced mode which allows us to limit our search by time period, date of publication, or document type. For example, we could search the History Resource Center for audio files on the topic of slavery.

You may be interested in examples of reference sources available through the History Resource Center. A search for materials dealing with the Fourth Crusade resulted in articles from the following reference volumes: Dictionary of the Middle Ages, DISCovering World History, History in Dispute, and World Eras. Trying a search for materials discussing the Trail of Tears brought up additional sources such as Americans at War, the Dictionary of American History, Encyclopedia of the American West, and the Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History. If you work at a small or medium-sized branch, the History Resource Center, in effect expands the size of your reference collection.

But now let’s go back to our student researching women’s suffrage. When we search this topic in the History Resource Center: US, our results include reference sources, articles, primary sources, and multimedia. Our customer is particularly interested in primary sources and the History Resource Center makes it easy for us to access quite a few. Among these are the 1890 Constitution of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Dorothy Dix on Women’s Suffrage, and an account of the Proceedings in the Trial of Susan B. Anthony on the Charge of Illegal Voting at the Presidential Election in November 1872.

Gale’s History Resource Center has several additional features. The home page features a chronology useful to students who have to construct timelines. The student research guide clearly defines the difference between primary and secondary sources while offering sound advice on how to write a research paper. If you host school visits, you might want to point out the helpful faculty guide that can provide teachers with questions that will facilitate class discussion of historical topics. With all these assets, Gale’s History Resource Center is definitely worth exploring.

Review Thursday: All the Living

All the Living by C. E. Morgan (2009)

If it is true that all novels have one of two plots--someone comes to town, someone leaves town--then C. E. Morgan's slim but stunning debut, All the Living, contains the first, with a twist: someone comes to town, then wanders away emotionally. Aloma, a gifted pianist, joins her sweetheart, Orren, on his Kentucky tobacco farm after a car accident kills his mother and older brother, leaving him alone in the world except for her. Herself orphaned too young ever to have truly loved anyone, Aloma has not learned the painful truth that the beloved is always partly a stranger. Thus Orren's grieving, which alienates him from her, spurs her own retreat from their union: she begins fantasizing about, and flirting with, the pastor at a church where she goes increasingly to play and practice. Gradually she realizes that she, more than Orren, is to blame for their relationship's unraveling and commits to it with a fuller heart.

Morgan makes her characters' inner dramas feel real through her painterly, poetic attention to externals; nearly every sentence offers a gem-like detail such as the "fawn brown carapace of the eggs," the wind's "soprano scream," the "first pursing blossoms," or a "hymnal, its leaves shagged by years of use." Her use of nature to symbolize emotions recalls writers of earlier periods, such as Hemingway or Melville. When she translates Aloma's growth into scriptural terms, filtered through the plainspoken but eloquent pastor, she resembles Marilynne Robinson, another female Midwestern novelist, while her serious tone, spare style, and psychological realism connect her to Alice Munro and Jhumpa Lahiri. All the Living is reason for rejoicing among all who prize vivid and insightful fiction.

Sailor Database Review: Heritage Quest

The availability of online tools, like the HeritageQuest database from ProQuest, has made genealogy, doing family history research, much easier than it was in the past. Here’s why.

Library customers working on their genealogy rely heavily on documents, the paper trail we all leave as we go through life, to discover important facts about their families, and this is especially true when they are searching for their more distant ancestors. Genealogists look for mention of their relatives in different kinds of documents, like birth, marriage, death, cemetery, and military records, plus directories, census reports, land records, wills, and many others. To locate all the records they need to get a complete picture of their ancestors, they would have to visit lots of different libraries, archives, courthouses, and cemeteries. This is where a genealogy database like HeritageQuest becomes a big time (and gas) saver for them, because it provides access to so many different documents, all in one place.

HeritageQuest offers images of actual documents that will be of interest to beginning family historians, to skilled amateurs, and even to professional genealogists. Using HeritageQuest they can access the U.S. Federal Census (1790-1930), one of the most widely used sets of documents among all genealogists, and an invaluable starting point in family history research. HeritageQuest also makes it possible to search for the names of ancestors in published family history books, in periodicals on genealogy and local history subjects, in Revolutionary War service records, and in records of the Freedman’s Bank (an institution set up by the U. S. government to serve former slaves following the Civil War).

There are a few things to remember about HeritageQuest:

• It’s an alternative resource to Ancestry.com, another genealogy database that is commonly used in libraries for searching the U.S. Federal Census. Most family history researchers will use the census often.
• HeritageQuest also provides access to records of the Freedman’s Bank, an important resource for African American genealogy researchers.
• HeritageQuest is offered to customers of all Maryland public library systems via the Sailor project.
• It is available for use from home, for free, with a library card. That’s another way it differs from Ancestry.com, which must be used from a library facility in order to avoid a fee.

HeritageQuest is easy to use, and you might want to try it out for yourself by searching for some of your own ancestors. Who knows? You could get hooked by the genealogy bug, too!

Review Thursday: Children's Books

Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai by Claire A. Nivola, 2008

When Wangari Maathai returned to Kenya after attending college in the United States, she encountered a much-changed country. Once covered with luxurious forest, the Kenya she found was a nearly treeless wasteland. Farmers had removed so many trees to make way for crops that Kenya was in danger of becoming a desert. Maathai spearheaded a grassroots effort to bring Kenya back from ecological disaster. This inspirational story about how one person really can make a difference would be useful for teaching children about both social activism and environmental conservation. Reading Planting the Trees of Kenya in conjunction with Jeanette Winter’s Wangari’s Trees of Peace would provide an interesting comparison between different authorial treatments of the same subject matter.


What the World Eats by Peter Menzel, 2008

What does a family of five eat in a week? In Greenland, that might include 9 pounds of walrus meat, in Mongolia a pound of dried-milk candy. Twenty-five families around the world are interviewed and photographed over the course of a week of typical food consumption. Each entry includes a photo of the family posed in their home with a week’s rations on a table. In addition to the vivid photographs, What the World Eats includes numerous recipes, charts, and graphs. This title is perfect for young foodies or as an introduction to cross-cultural perspectives on a universal human activity. What the world Eats would be a fun read as a companion to It’s Disgusting and We Ate It: Fun Food Facts from Around the World – and Throughout History by James Solheim.


Money Madness by David A. Adler, 2009

Everyone wants money, but what is it exactly? Money Madness is an introduction to how money works as a medium of exchange and a store of value. By way of explaining the function of money, Adler also introduces younger readers to ideas such as the market, credit, and supply and demand. This is an excellent presentation in simple terms of many basic concepts in economics. Younger readers who are interested in understanding the current financial mess will find it particularly useful.

Sailor Database Review: Books and Authors

Gale’s Books and Authors electronic database replaced Ebsco’s Novelist for Maryland public libraries July 1st. This database is modeled on Gale’s long-standing readers’ advisory print product What Do I Read Next. Books and Authors has several unique features that should be of interest and benefit to customers as well as to library staff. Its “Read-a-Like” wizard enables the user to supply a title that the user has enjoyed, and based on subject, author, or genre criteria that the user specifies, the database will suggest books to read. Its “Who, What, Where, When” feature enables the user to browse books by character, subject, location, and time period. The “My Reading Room” feature lets the user save and modify reading lists, reviews that the user has written, and booklists that the user has created.

Users can search by author, title, keyword, series, or genre, and they can filter by age group (adult, young adult, or children). Non-fiction as well as fiction titles are included. Extensive lists or award winners are included, as well as expert picks, librarian picks, and community picks. There is also an advanced search feature as well as an extensive help feature.

Review Thursday: Search Engines

Search engines have been in the news a lot recently, due to the search engine merger between Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing, so there may be changes coming, but for now let’s look at some Google features that you may want to add to your search strategy.

An underused and very useful feature is the minus sign. It is a helpful addition to enhance your search. Take a look at the effect. If you type ‘dolphins’ in the search box, you will have many hits. Now add ‘-football’ and you will see the total hits reduce in number. The minus sign needs to be immediately before the word and should be preceded with a space. So your search is ‘dolphins –football.’ It is useful to look at the first group of results and then consider another term to exclude. You can use the minus sign multiple times, but remember that each term you exclude will no longer be searched. This can be a useful feature for narrowing your search as you view results and see recurring terms that you know are not what you’re seeking.

Another useful filter is narrowing the domain. Rather than searching the entire content of the internet, you may want to consider searching only a government or educational site. In some cases this gives you authoritative sites, although with the edu domain, you must be alert to the source. A PhD student’s site about dolphins might be excellent, while a 6th grader’s school presentation, well-done though it might be, would not carry authority as a source for you to use with your patrons. For the domain, you can type the word site followed immediately by a colon (site:) and then add the domain. Another useful domain is org, although always remember that it eliminates other domains, such as com or info. You can also narrow by country domains if you’d like to focus your search. If you’re interested, domains are listed at the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.

In the case of these limiters, as well as some others that will be discussed later, you can use the Google Advanced Search link, immediately to the right of ‘Search’ on the Google search page. Instead of typing ‘site’ or the minus sign, you can fill in the blank.

I have customers who are interested in learning more about specific state regulations...

...such as those that regulate the establishment of day care centers. Where can I find this information? And is it available online?

There are times when customers want legal information, but what they are seeking is not a law. As confusing as that sounds, state regulations are significant department policies that have the force of law but are not actually statues (laws). Black’s Law Dictionary defines a regulation as “a rule or order, having legal force, usually issued by an administrative agency.” For example, in the Family Law volume of the Maryland Code, Title 5, Subtitle 5 (FL 5-550-557.1) states that the Department of Education shall have authority to register family day care homes and adopt regulations that relate to the registration of family day care. But this law does not lay out the regulations one must follow to obtain that license. Those rules can be found in the Code of Maryland Regulations, more commonly referred to as COMAR. The details for the licensing procedure are found in COMAR under the title for the State Board of Education (Title 13A of COMAR). There is a hierarchical code number system, which makes it easy to identify where to find regulations. Here’s the explanation from the Division of State Documents (DSD) in the Secretary of State’s office.

DSD manages the system, which is identical to the federal practice of issuing regulations. First proposed regulations are published in the Maryland Register and later codified into COMAR.

The Maryland Code and COMAR are both online and very much up-to-date. You can also find them and many other legal links on the Maryland Law subject guide at SLRC. There are multiple ways in which COMAR can be searched. You can search by the agency name, through a table of contents structure or by using a keyword. It’s tricky. If you don’t use the keyword as it appears in the regulation, you won’t find it. It can be challenging. There’s another thing you need to know about COMAR online. When you retrieve the citations for a topic, you will get a list of regulation links to view. Regulations can only be opened one at a time because they are listed individually. There is no way to open all the regulations for a subject at once. So if you want, for example, to retrieve all the regulations pertaining to child and family day care you will have to click on each regulation one-by-one to open them. When you have a lot of regulations in one subtitle it can be very labor intensive! So try to be as specific as possible to limit your results.

You can get help from the Maryland Department librarians at SLRC. The Department has a few different indexes to COMAR and a complete set in hard copy. If you want to get a section without opening all the individual regulations they can fax or e-mail pages to you. If you still want more help on understanding COMAR, take a look at the Maryland law section of Legal Reference for Public Libraries e-Learning Module at the LATI site on slrc.info.