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.