Issues and Controversies

Two years ago we cancelled a subscription to a very good database because it didn't have enough use, but it is such a valuable site that this month we welcome back Issues and Controversies. This is a web resource that helps students understand today’s key issues. This is a product designed for the student report writer or debater.

Here’s a sample from the start of the article about drone aircrafts:

The issue: Is the use of drone aircraft abroad a valuable military tool or an ultimately ineffective method of warfare? Should drones be used domestically for law enforcement and other uses, or will drones in U.S. airspace lead to invasions of privacy?

• Critics of drones say: The use of drones to carry out killings abroad has resulted in civilian casualties, which fuel anti-U.S. sentiment abroad. Furthermore, the government's embrace of drone warfare has resulted in military activity that lacks transparency and accountability. Domestically, authorizing law enforcement or private interests to fly drones in U.S. airspace will result in unconstitutional invasions of privacy.
• Supporters of drones say: Drones have proved to be valuable surveillance tools abroad and can carry out targeted killings of U.S. enemies without risking U.S. lives. Conventional warfare has become too outdated to effectively fight highly mobile, shadowy terrorist networks, and drones represent the future of warfare. Domestically, drones could be effective in a variety of capacities, from fighting crime to tracking forest fires to locating missing persons.

What follows are ten pages of supporting material.

The way Issues and Controversies helps with finding a good topic.  You can pick a subject from the “Issues in the Headlines” section, start drilling through the Subject Index, or pick a word and search for it in the Keyword Search box.

Of course there are all the topics you normally think of when it comes to controversies, like abortion, drug use, smoking, and withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

You might be surprised what else you find in here: Overfishing, the conflict in Kashmir, committing the mentally ill, and bounty hunting are just a few.

So please take a look at Issues and Controversies even if you’re out of school but like to find out new things. A good site to pair this up with is Opposing Viewpoints in Context, you can check it out now and we'll look at it in detail later.

Healthful Living with the Mount Prospect Web Resources

The Library subscribes to several helpful web resources that can assist you in making decisions on the most healthful way to live.  One of these is called Consumer Health Complete .  It contains articles from more than 550 consumer health-related periodicals; Drug & Herb Information provides information on 1,300 generic medications, natural products, and vaccines, as well asvideos and evidence-based health reports, the kind that doctors read.

Let's search for whooping cough.  The results give us one evidence-based report, ten chapters from reference books, 16 fact sheets, 5 videos, and over 200 articles from magazines.  There are also a number of herbs listed in the Drugs & Herbs section with reproduction of the full-text sources so you can have more information about herbal remedies.  "Is skunk cabbage really something I want to use to relieve my son's whooping cough?"

Another web resource we have is Salem Health.  This product offers ebook access to reference books, including Magill's Medical Guide, Psychology & Mental Health, Genetics, Cancer, and Infectious Diseases.  A search for whooping cough results in a total of 56 articles from these six reference sources.  What they think are the most helpful are the first few articles on the list.  Results can also be filtered by articles about children, the elderly, women, and men, which is good, for example, if you're just looking for ways to treat your child. 

A third resource is Gale Virtual Reference Library's Health and Medicine eBook Collection. As discussed before, this is resource is a collection of e-reference books.  Some of the titles included in this series include:

• The Gale Encyclopedia of Senior Health
• The Gale Encyclopedia of Genetic Disorders
• UXL Complete Health Resource
• Acne
• Depression
• UXL Encyclopedia of Drugs and Addictive Substances

So why settle for just Googling for something that might not give you an honest answer or may even try to sell you a gimmick medicine when you could look it up at the Library!

Overhaul of Gale Virtual Reference Library

Another web resource has been radically transformed in the last month: Gale Virtual Reference Library, which we also call GVRL. This is our web resource that has nearly 400 reference ebooks.  This is one of my favorite resources because it covers such a wide range of topics. There are resources on business, movies, college scholarships, history, biographies, medicine and more. These reference books are always available, even when the Library is closed.  New features include:

• A completely updated, engaging user interface available in more than 35 languages
• Improved user-focused navigation and organization
• Eye catching book covers and interactive online book experience with two-page view and page flipper
• ReadSpeaker text-to-speech technology in 19 languages
• Cross-search and browse easily across series

I find the book covers to be so inviting that when I see them I like to open them up and look through them.  This is really an improvement over the old way of just listing the titles.   A general search through all of them is still available with the  search box at the top of the page. 

Auto Repair Reference Center Updated

Wanting to repair your car yourself? We have the database for you:  Auto Repair Reference Center.

If you've never been there before, it has coverage of nearly every car you could possibly own.  If you've used the site before you'll be pleased with the changes they've made.  The first thing you'll notice is the great new look with loads of color!  No more of the white screen look that Google made so ubiquitous.  But there is a lot more to this redesign, including:

•    Coverage of more than 37,000 vehicles from 1945 to present
•    Millions of drawings and step-by-step photographs
•    Approximately 110,000 technical service bulletins & recalls issued by the original equipment vehicle manufacturer
•    Over 180,000 enhanced wiring diagrams for easy viewing and printing
•    Specifications & maintenance schedules
•    Labor Time Guide & Estimator
•   Video overviews of auto systems with AutoIQ
•    Quick Tips (a complete guide to vehicle ownership & maintenance)
•    Diagnostic information
•    Completely redesigned interface with intuitive, user-friendly navigation 
•    Enhanced searching within content collections
•    Ability to print/email/save high-quality PDF records
•    Increased repair coverage – more than 37,000 vehicles covered
•    Expanded, in-depth repair information from the major original equipment manufacturers, including Ford, Honda, and GMC
•    On-Board Diagnostics (OBD II) codes with description and troubleshooting information

So if you like to do things yourself and save a whole lot of money, try Auto Repair Reference Center.  If you’re at home and you have a laptop, you can save the PDF files to it and bring it out to the garage with you.

 

AtoZ World Travel

The Library's newest, exclusive web-resource is AtoZ World Travel, a database that is easy to use and full of depth.  Of the 202 cities, there is plenty for the new traveller.  Before you go somewhere, you would need to know what the city is like, something about its history, and some places to visit.  AtoZ World Travel has these things.  There are recommendations of historical monuments, religious sites, architectual landmarks, and musuems.  The listings are thorough but standard for a first time visitor.  For the more seasoned or daring traveller, there is a section called the Insider's Guide that contains things you might not see in the regular guidebooks. 

For example, they list these 4 things for New Delhi, India:

• Agrasen Ki Baoli Stepwell (700 year old ruins)
• Lodi Gardens (a beautiful public park built around 500 year old tombs)
• The Museum of Toilets (this is really off the wall! And if you've "done it all" this is certainly a good place to head)
• Street Children Walking Tour (a charity offers a view on the life of homeless children and an offer for you to help make their lives better)

There is a lot of information about survival, such as how to get around and if there are any tricks.  In Delhi, public transportation not only includes taxis, but also 3 wheeled covered scooters called auto-rickshaws, and cycle-rickshaws (and cycle here means someone pulls you around in a cart by bicycle!). 

Other information is less used but very important: travel warnings, a listing of emergency phone numbers, explanations on how dialing the phones work at your destination, and embassy and consulate contact information, images of electrical outlets and plugs.  And something that is really cool is in the money section.  There are complete full color images of the currency.

Travelling in the US?  New York, Seattle, Houston, Dallas and Chicago are only some of our many cities.  The Baha'i Temple in Wilmette is listed as on the things to do for the insiders.  There are even directions on how to get to it: take the CTA Purple Line to Linden, its last stop, and then walk five minutes to the right of the station. 

All of these reports can be downloaded into PDF files for printing or transfer to your iPad or tablet to take along with you. 



Fun with Dictionaries

The Library now subscribes to two online  dictionaries, and who would have know that dictionaries really were this much fun.  The first is The Oxford English Dictionary, and it has the definitions of over 600,000 words with millions of quotations from historical documents.  Some of the words you'll find pretty amusing.  For example, your parents have been going away for the weekend to guddle but they won’t tell you what they’re up to?  Look up guddle and you see that it is to catch fish with your bare hands.

And if you want a real laugh, look up LOL. It's defined as

Originally and chiefly in the language of electronic communications: ‘ha ha!’; used to draw attention to a joke or humorous statement, or to express amusement.

LOL actually goes back to the late 80s. There's a quote from May 8, 1989 from an early online message board, FidoNews, “LOL – Laughing Out Loud”.

Our other new online dictionary, Oxford Dictionaries, is less historical and more current.  They define LOL a little differently:

(chiefly in electronic communication) used to draw attention to a joke or amusing statement, or to express amusement:  I love how you said ‘coffee is not my cup of tea’. LOL!

More fun uses:

Miss Manners says that nicknames are useful for when you forget your spouse's name.  Maybe you've used the term "Dear" a bit too often.  Type in "dear" using the thesaurus option by the search bar, and you get a few choice words: dearest, darling, sweetheart, pet.

Pet?  When did people start calling their beloved pet?  With the link over towards the right side of the page, you can go back to Oxford English Dictionary, where it defines Pet as  

a. An indulged, spoiled, or favourite, child.
b.Any person who is indulged, spoiled, or treated as a favourite, esp. in a way that others regard with disapproval. Also (occas.) used of a thing.
c. A sweet, obedient, or obliging person. Freq. used as a term of endearment, or as a familiar form of address.

Of course, calling someone a pet is kind of patronizing.  To answer my question, though, there is a quotes from as far back as the 18th century.  So people still use pet, but how about not forgetting your spouse's name? 

There are too many interesting and cool features in these dictionaries to list them all here but here is one more:  Are you a writer working on an historical novel?  On the advanced search page you can indicate both usage and origin of words.  So if you need words from the Indian subcontinent to describe a woman, you can end up with a list of words: begum, Devi, memsahib, shrimati.   There are definitions so you will know if you're making the right choice.

That’s all I have time for this post. Farewell, adieu, au revoir, ciao, adios; bye, bye-bye, so long, see you later, see you, sayonara; bon voyage; cheers, and toodle-oo!

Free Access to the Daily Herald

Even though the Daily Herald website is now going behind a paywall, you can still access the full text articles as they appear in the paper (minus photos).  It's through our subscription with ProQuest Newsstand.  This is a large collection of Daily Herald articles going all the way back to 1997so you will be able to gather a lot of background information.

It doesn't look like the Herald website, and you need to know what you're looking for.  Here are some tips for making it easier:

1. Follow this link to The Daily Herald
2.  Click on Advanced search link.
3. Put key words into the search box.
4.  Limit by date using the drop down menu.
5.  Click the search button.
6.  The results will presented newest to oldest.

Since this is a database more than a news website, the articles are delayed by 24 to 48 hours. But if you want to browse all the articles from a particular day, here are the directions for that:

1.  Underneath where it says Daily Herald (Chicago), select the Publications button.
2.  There is really only one link in the results.  It says Daily Herald, so click on it.
3. This brings you to the page containing the publication information.  In the lower portion there's a section that says "Browse specific issues," and there are date ranges divided by decades.  Click the + sign in front of the decade you wish to expand.
4.  Then expand the year.
5.  Expand the month
6.  Now select the date you wish to browse
7.  From here you will have a listing of all the articles in alphabetical order by title.

Gale Legal Forms Library

Need a workable lease for your tenants?  Hiring someone to teach your child piano?  Writing your last will?  Need power of attorney?

The Library has thousands of Illinois-specific legal forms available for you through our web-resource,  Legal Forms Library. 

Even if you don't need, for example, a prenuptial agreement or a service contract, it's just interesting to see what forms are available, and you never know when you'll need a document to make your life feel more secure.

But Legal Forms Library includes more than just documents for you to fill in. There is a Law Digest area which summarizes state laws for the average person.  There is also has a Legal Q&A section.  These are real-life questions.  Some are simple, such as "How do I adopt my niece?" Others are much more complex, such as the one about the angry aunt who wrote a stingy Will out of spite but then tried to amend it when in a better mood but then died.  The answers to these questions can be lengthy and refer back to the Law Digest and the Legal Forms sections. 

Search Hint for Legal Forms
You have the option of searching either categories or titles.  When searching, it is very helpful to search both because they do pull up different titles.

Salem History

 Last month, a charismatic media personality gave an unusual rendering of Paul Revere's late night ride.  There is not going to be a recounting of that even here, but it is interesting that some of her fans began to edit the Paul Revere article in Wikipedia to reflect her telling. You must be familiar with Wikipedia, an editable encyclopedia.  Anyone can edit it, and it is a good place to begin research but sometimes suffers from pranks and political leanings.

And just the other day, another certain politician claimed that John Quincy Adams was a founding father.  Of course, it soon followed that the John Quincy Adams article at Wikipedia was changed.  In their editing notes, someone wrote, "Please don't edit an historical article based on current events."  Wikipedia is a good place to go for information about music or television shows, but it has its limits.

If you're looking for an authoritative resource to learn about history, and you don't want to be at the mercy of someone with a bias, check out our unique web resource Salem History.  Every time the Library purchases a reference book from Salem Press in the field of history, we get an online version of it for free.  What's special about this is that while most Reference books cannot be checked out for long, the online version is available to you anywhere you have access to the Internet and your Library card. 

The specific volumes we have in Salem History include the decades from the 1930s to the 90s, a biographical dictionary of great athletes, a series of encyclopedias about great events from history including a set about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender events.  And if you're interested in health, environmentalism, the solar system, and literature, there are Salem databases for these as well.  You can see the listing here.

So if you want an authoritative website to get your history from, check out Salem History.  Here, at least, you know you're getting quality material that isn't influenced by someone's spontaneous wish to "change history" to suit the political climate.

Hey me maties, International Talk Like a Pirate Day is September 19th

 
Blow me down!  One of the great things we have through the Library is Mango Languages, a web-based language learning resource.  Mango does some cool things as promotion. Right now they're teaching the language of Piratry... the piratical language.....  You know, it's the language pirates speak!  

 Here's the link : http://www.mangolanguages.com/store/pirate-day.html

 

This is only available through their public page, and not the Library page, but be sure to check out the Library's edition of Mango to learn any of the 30 real languages on offer.

Here's the link to get you to our list of web resources: http://www.mppl.org/research/title.html