It's simply del.icio.us

I'm not referring to you favorite deep dish.  I know that delicious too.  But I'm taking about something tooootally different.  In fact, have you ever been in our library and you badly needed to get to some of the webpages you bookmarked the night before on the computer in your bedroom.  A lot a good those bookmarks where to you when you were at school.  Well, there is a way to have your bookmarks with you all of the time.  Go to del.icio.us and create an account.  Ta Da.  You are close to your bookmarks and favorites all of the time. Use the following link to get started.

del.icio.us

Getting inside the author's life is to get inside the mind

Guess what. The reason why John Steinbeck wrote so much about poverty is the poor guy lived through the depression.  So impovered people and tough times  are all through his novels. I always tease that Alice Walker must have seen early on a lot of abuse women in her time.  She often writes about how these women over come.  Remember The Color Purple, In Love and in Trouble.  What about the main character in The Third Life of Grange Copeland. Understand that researching the author's background is huge when you are examining his or her short stories.  You may be able to weave a little of this information into your draft and final research paper.  So the perfect place to start is that database Student Research Center that I've shown you.  In this database, you want to search the biographies section. Just be open to the life of your author influencing the writing that flows outward.

Using Literary Guides

I'm working with few of you sophomores who are working on research papers examining short stories by a particular author.  So let me me remind you of a few tools that will help you with this.  First, don't forget to look up full-text short stories online by using the term etext in your search.  The next tip, I admit, I have some reservation in sharing.  I used to abhor the idea of students using Cliffnotes.  But lately, I have begun to reconsider using these because most of these literary guides now provide study questions, possible essay topics, and above all a themes component. This is the area that you will need to visit if you are having trouble determining what the themes are.  So I'll back off the hesitancy if you guys promise to use these tools wisely. Because there really are few worthwhile shortcuts in life.

Students witnessing history

It is amazing how much life, thought, joy, ambition, reflection students wrung out of the presidential election on 2008.  They are very much aware that the number eight represents new beginnings and they right on the precipice of one.  Way to go, kids.

Teachable Moments.

Teachable Moments are best when the learning goes both ways. Young people I soooooo enjoyed sharing election online resources and library research skills on Election Day with you in your US Government class. Hope today's lesson and skills move with you into your future.

--Remember in third grade when you had to figure out the coded message within that activity sheet. Here's one more for you-- take a shot.
GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Here is more eye candy for you. Go celebrate by doing your own word scramble at www.wordle.net. Click on the signage to see it fullscreen.

Britannica Online More to the Table

Students who've visited the library this year have been fortunate to maximize the searches with a Texshare -sponsored database, Britannica High School Edition Online. It's been working great.


Britannica has been a pretty good encyclopedia as certainly students just like are using its online version around our state and the country. Recently Britannica Online has added two new features that you will find invaluable for a number of your classes. Britannica has added its own blog and an RSS feed option. The blogs cover a variety of subjects including Campaign 2008, popular culture, environment, geography, international affairs, technology, cult of celebrity and much more. It has an advantage as its collection of blogs are published by acknowledged experts in a particular field.


RSS feed alerts are available on any keyword search that you've conducted. That means if you've research voter suppression on Friday, October 31 and your report is not due until November 11. RSS feed will continue to gather information on your topic and send the updates to your email account past October 31 until you unsubscribe to the feed. Beyond cool, not to mention helpful.

Eye Candy that feeds the brain

It is not uncommon for high school students to journal their thoughts as an English class requirement. A great way to feed those strings of thought is with a new Library 2.0 tool called Tag Galaxy. You'll find this tool an absolute eye wonder. Go to Tag Galaxy .

It is a idea starter. Look at the pictures after feeding the search bar a string of words. Let it load. Click on the galaxy that indicates photos and travel worlds away. You should get results with most topics as these are the visuals that come from newspapers around the country.

Enjoy.