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Start with a good biographical source like Wilson Biographies.

Go to the high school library Web site and click MAGNOLIA in the top right.  If you’re not at school remember you’ll have to click “access resources from home” at the top right of the MAGNOLIA home page and enter a password.  Email me or your English teacher for this.

Scroll to the bottom and click Wilson.

Click Biographies Plus.

Enter your person’s name and click start.

You’ll get a list of people, so just click the right one and you’ll get your biographical information.  Notice there are additional links on the left (at least for most entries there are links to additional information.)

Be sure to cite your source!

If you’ll change your printer settings to print “economy” or “draft” copy, then you can save alot of ink!  You won’t be able to tell much difference in the quality of the print job; the ink won’t be quite as dark, but it’ll be fine.  It’s plenty dark enough!  Oh, go ahead and at least try it.

When you click print, you know you get that large gray window, that big gray box?  The name of your pinter appears on a white line — click the “properties” button to the right of that line.  

This new gray box will be different for each brand of printer.  You need to look for a choice of “print quality” that allows you to choose among choices like best, normal, draft, etc.  There’s going to be several tabs at the top of this box or window  For my HP printer, the print quality choices are on the first tab I open up to, but you may have to click some of those other tabs to find this option of “print quality.”

When you find it, choose the “draft” choice or the choice named economy or fastdraft — the choice that means not the best copy that can be printed.  So, go ahead and click your choice.

Click ok.

Now you’re back to the window you started with, where you clicked properties. So, go ahead and click OK and that’ll start the actual printing.

When you set this up, … when you click print, then click properties, then click draft, … in THAT window, you may have a choice at the bottom to “set as default” … clicking that button is a good thing.  It means all copies you print will be printed in draft unless you go back in and change it to normal or best. 

If you don’t have the option to “set as default”, then you’re going to have to go through “properties” everytime you print in order to change your print option to draft.

Alot of people use a search engine as their home page.  Some folks use their email login page as their home page.  If you want to change your home page … here’s how.

For Internet Explorer:  Go to the web page you want to be  your home page - the page that you’ll see everytime you open the Internet. 

Click Tools on the top menu bar and then click Internet Options.  You should be on the General tab and, if not, click it.  The web site address for your current home page appears in that white box.  Now click USE CURRENT.  This will put the web site address that you’re currently on, the one you want to be your new home page, into the white box.

Finally, click Apply at the bottom.

You’re done. And you’re welcome!

Librarian, librarian

When you need a current event that took place outside the U.S., then go to a news site and look for their “World” news section. 

On the CNN Web site the section for World news is located toward the bottom left of the home page.  On the USA Today Web site … look at the right hand side, scroll down a bit, and look for a tiny blue link titled “World.”  On the New York Times site the World news link is on the left and on the Washington Post site you have to scroll across the “news” link on the blue menu line at the top and the World news link will appear in a drop down list. 

Just LOOK for a link to WORLD news on the news site your using.

 Remember I have many news sites linked to the library Web site.

 And, remember to look for the print friendly link to print your news item.  This saves paper and ink which is REALLY important at home if your printer prints in color.  Using that print friendly version elimiates those ads and saves tons of ink!

BEt you don’t know what this post is about.

Search strategies.  It’s about how to search more effectively using boolean operators.  And that’s not a person.

 Let’s say you’re searching for black panthers, the animal, as in our school mascot.  Ok? 

So you type in black panther just like that, nothing special, and you get a gazillion results.

Well, if you’ll put black panther in quotation marks like this: “black panther” , you’ll cut your results down to a zillion. 

When you type in black panther the search engine is looking for the word black and the word panther anywhere on that page/site.  BUT, if you were to get smart and put ” ” around it, then the search engine says “ok, I gotta have panther right after the word black, I gotta have panther right after the word black,…”  Hmmmm.

In your zillion results what you are seeing is alot of stuff on the black panther political party.  Let’s take that out of the results.  Type “black panther” -party

Yep.  That’s a minus sign right in front of party and no, I didn’t forget to space in between.  Do not space in between the - and the word party.  That “should” take out the entries that include the word party which is going to toss most of the political party stuff. 

You can do the same thing to eliminate other result topics you don’t need, but you’d only want to start eliminating things that are in bulk and that you dont’ want.  If you’re getting only one political party site every 20 listings in your results, why bother taking them out?  What a pain.  But, if you’re seeing half your entries on every results page containing political party, now THAT I’d take out.  That’s in the way.  Minus them right out of there. 

Try it sometime.  You’ll be pleasantly surprised that it truly does work.  Search engines generally have a help section somewhere and reading that will give you more tips on searching more productively. 

Hope this helps someone out there,

librarian librarian

Someone asked how you can get the page number to automatically appear on the pages of your research paper … here’s how.

In Word, go to View, Headers & Footers, then a little menu window thing pops up. 

BEFORE you start typing anything in, if you want this page number and/or your name to appear on the right hand side CLICK the right justify button (you know, it’s next to the center button).  Type your name if you want it to appear on each page.  Now click “insert auto text” on your little menu bar window thing and click “page”.  OR, slowly move your mouse over each little icon and you’ll get to one that’s for page.  Click that one to add the page number to your header.

Now, don’t get upset.  If you don’t want those little dashes in front of and behind your number just backspace them right out of the picture. 

Look at where your name is.  Get in front of the page number, put your cursor in front of the page number and backspace to get rid of all the space between your name and the page number. Hit the spacebar if they’re too close together.  Get it just like you want it and then click CLOSE.

If you forget to click the right justify button before you type your info in, just put your cursor in FRONT of your info and click the right justify button.

If you need to change something in that “header” just double click right up there on top of your header (page number or name, whatever you typed up there) … or anywhere along the top near your header … and that header window menu thing will appear.

You did it.

FOOTER.  If you need something to appear at the bottom of your page, when you first get the header/footer menu bar window thing, scroll across all those little icons on it and one will say “switch between header and footer” or something to that effect.  That’s what you need.  Click it.  Now you’re creating a footer. 

 Hope this helps someone,

librarian librarian

Several students have come by the last week or so and asked for help writing their Works Cited page.  I’ve been directing them to the library website where there’s a style guide link on the blue line.  I’ve just added “Mrs. Kemp’s examples” to that page and these should be very helpful.

 Here you’re going to find some examples that I recently wrote for juniors working on research papers.  I’ll add more examples to the page so check with “Mrs. Kemp’s examples” each time you have to site your sources…just because an example isn’t there this week doesn’t mean it’s never going to be there.  If you need a specific example, come by and ask or post me a comment.  I’ll be glad to add an example for the type source you’re using. Someone used several pamphlets from the vertical files today (what are vertical files, you say), so I’ll be adding an example for that.

But, there are several sites listed on that page that are very helpful.  The first one is a USM site.  Then there’s several links to Purdue University sites (thank you, Mrs. L. Smith) which are separated according to source type, like books, magazines, electronic sources, etc.  You just click on the link and you get examples only for that type source.  The USM site has all source types on one page and you just keep scrolling til you find what you need. 

For articles students get from MAGNOLIA or MELO, I have examples of the Works Cited entry under “Mrs. Kemp’s examples.”  You’re welcome

For Web sites I’ve listed two examples and I’ll post another for citing graphics in the near future.  We tend to forget that when we use a picture or clipart from the Internet WE NEED TO CITE THAT SOURCE.  It’s illegal to use information from others without properly citing your source which includes images AND music!  Do you have music on your FaceBook, or you MySpace?  Hmmm….did you have permission to upload it and post it?  Did you cite the source?  It may not be legal even if you site the source.  Be very, very careful.

If you don’t have a jump drive, also called flash drive or thumb drive, you are behind the times, my friend.  If you’re a computer person you just go ahead and spend about twenty bucks and get one.  Then buy you one of the little cases for it that fits on your key ring so you don’t lose it, I mean misplace it. 

Jump drives come in storage sizes; I’ve seen 256mb up to 4G.  The first one I bought about 4 years ago was a 256mb and it held tons of mostly Word documents.  I had a few pictures and probably around 6 PowerPoint slideshows on it, but if you’re going to purchase a jump drive I’d really go ahead and buy at least a 512mb or 1G.  The size you buy is going to depend on what you’re going to put on it.  If you’re a digital camera hound and will have tons of pictures to store, then you’re going to want to invest in a bigger jump.  My dd is a digital camera finatic and she has a 2G and it’s almost full. 

A quick way to check how much space the pictures you already have are going to take is to make sure they’re all on your computer and are in a master folder.  (You may have a bunch of individual folders for all your different categories of pictures, but then all the picture folders are housed in the same master photo folder.  Lost you?  Sorry.)  Anyway, locate that master picture folder, right click on it, then click properties.  That’ll tell you the size of all those picture files inside that whopper folder!

Shop around before you buy a jump drive … and watch the sales.  I bought a 1G before Christmas for $20 and it wasn’t on sale, but you can catch a 3-4G on sale for that price or not much more.  Also, compare prices for the size of the jump.  When I bought the 1G, they had a 513MB for $15 and the 1G for just five bucks more.

More on this topic ….

If you have a question for me, post it as a comment.  I’ll be happy to help you with all things to do with library and school stuff and what books to read and Internet and how to cite sources and computer questions and where do I get a current event and … I may not have the answer, but I’ll do my best to find the answer.

I’ll also have one blog post each month that is specifically for asking questions.  It’ll be titled “Questions“.  Smart, huh?  You can find it by looking under categories.  Eventually, I’ll compile all the questions and answers into a FAQ page.  I’ll let you know when that happens.

For now each day’s blog will be about things that students and parents and sometimes teachers ask me. 

Holler if you have a question.

 librarian librarian

Please use our library.

I open the library when I arrive at school - by 7:15 a.m.  You are welcome to hang out with me until 1st period begins.  The computers are available.  You can sit at a table and work on your homework since you’re such a good little student.  I know you will want to study for your tests in a quiet corner (better sit on the far side so you can concentrate better.)  PLEASE sign the clipboard as soon as you arrive.  If you’re using a computer be sure to write in your computer number.

There’s a few comfy chairs over in the magazine area and our magazines are begging you to come spend time with them.  We have a wide variety: Ebony, Entertainment Weekly, People, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Time, Seventeen, Everyday with Rachel Ray, and many more.

You may also come to the library during your lunch block.  We’re open from start to finish of all four lunch blocks.  Remember to sign in.  Put down your computer number if you’re planning on using a computer or just draw a line through that block if you don’t need a computer.

After school the library is open until 4:00 p.m. and you’re welcome to pop in as long as we do not have a faculty meeting.  If you need to use a computer after school and we DO have a meeting, come see me.  If possible I’ll meet you in the computer lab.  And you do still have to sign the clipboard when you use the library after school. 

You’re also welcome to come during class as long as your teacher agrees and WRITES YOU A PASS.  Don’t come without a pass.  And, always remember to sign in.

librarian librarian