10b. Betty Jean McMichael had four sons.
10c. LFPL does not have Telos, at least not that I could find. We do have British Journal for the History of Philosophy and Clinical Medicine and Research in full text in Academic Search Premier.
11a. The manager for Vanguard Target Retirement 2020 is Duane F. Kelly. The stewardship grade is B and the overall Morningstar rating is four stars.
11b. I found an article titled "Top high-definition LCD TVs under $2,000" from Consumer Reports in August 2008. I used InfoTrac OneFile.
11c. When I use 402 as the zip I came up with a list of 94 coffee shops. If I narrow it to 40202 I came up with 10 coffee shops. Out of the 10 coffee shops I think Dunkin Donuts would be the biggest competitor because their annual sales were higher than the other shops and put them in the $500,000-1 million dollar range. I'm not real confident on this question I had a lot of trouble on this one...
12.
I liked the Consumer Reports for personal use. For library use with teens and children I don't really see myself using these particular databases, maybe the Courier Journal and newspapers for homework help. Personally I think we should be telling more teens and teachers about the Learning Express Library database. I try to mention it at all outreaches I go to so teens know they can take FREE practice ACT exams. But not just teens, I wish I had known about LEL when I had to take the GRE and I'm know there are tons of people who don't know that they can use the LEL database to take practice US citizenship test, SAT, LSAT, MCAT, GED, postal exam, etc, etc. I guess the newspaper databases and consumer reports would be some of the most helpful and interesting to patrons. And I cannot possibly answer the question on if LFPL could only have ONE research tool which would I choose. It just seems impossible to answer that, I guess if I absolutely had to I would say the Learning Express Library because that is the database I am most familiar with and I think it offers a huge array of services for children, teens AND adults. It offers practice exams, skill building for adults, resume and job help, math skills, reading improvement, writing, grammar and so much more for elementary students up to college students. It also has a whole section in Spanish which I can't read but I figure must be useful to people who do speak Spanish...
Now if you want a top ten I can do that, here is is not in any particular order though, I just tried to keep some databases for adults, teens and kids. But I still feel like its hard for me to do this because my area of expertise is teens and children, I'm not really sure on all the reference questions and needs of adult patrons, I have a general idea...but I'm kind of guessing.
1. Infotrac Onefile
2. Business Reference USA
3 Courier Journal (Proquest)
4 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia
5 PVA
6 CultureGrams
7 Learning Express Library
8 Lands and Peoples Online
9 Academic Search Premier
10 one of those genealogy databases, I don't know which is the best but one of those :)
I have to say I feel totally out of practice using databases since I finished my Master's several years ago. I honestly rarely have a real opportunity to use one with patrons or for an actual reference question except for my own personal use. I occasionally show teens the databases when they need help with a homework or research project. Its not often though, when I do try and show them how to use a database to find an answer their eyes glaze over and they don't pay attention or they just prefer to use wikipedia or the Internet, sigh...I can't say I blame them all the time though; like them I don't have a lot of patience either and I expect answers and information way too quickly. Using some of these databases for this assignment took me FOREVER (forever meaning like 5 minutes or more, God forbid!) and I had a difficult time finding the answers sometime and I became very frustrated at times. Makes me feel stupid and I have a Master's degree. Maybe I'm just out of practice but I can't imagine how other patrons, particularly teens (or adults who don't have a lot of computer experience) would feel comfortable using them all of the time when you can just plug a question into Google and get an answer immediately. Granted it might not be the best or most reliable answer though but it just seems so much easier sometimes...I know that's AWFUL of me to say having a library science degree, oh well, judge me if you must...
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