Free Resources

Maximizing Your Libby Borrowing Options

This week is more of a life improvement tip than a professional pick-me-up. As (most of us, I assume) are residents of the wonderful Allegheny County, we are entitled to a lot of electronic library resources—particularly the titles available in Libby. Despite the best efforts of the DRC, some titles are simply too popular, and waitlists can sometimes extend into weeks and months. Sure, you could just find another book to listen to/read, but wouldn’t it be nice to have even more options for borrowing?

Enter the Free Library of Philadelphia.

But wait—we do not live in Philadelphia, how is this relevant? To answer, I would like to emphasize this paragraph from the Free Library’s website:

“A Free Library card is available at no cost to anyone who lives, works, pays taxes, or goes to school in the City of Philadelphia. In addition, anyone who lives in the state of Pennsylvania can obtain a Free Library card without charge.”

This would be a great time to mention a user can load several library cards onto their Libby account. My most recent and favorite success is South to America by Imani Perry. Recommended by a coworker, I was disappointed to see the waitlist extending into the double-digit number of weeks. But, with my handy-dandy Free Library of Philadelphia card, all was not lost:

The process for getting the card was simple and painless, and you can get started HERE. Because I am not a Philadelphia resident, the approval took a little longer (a few days) than for a typical Philly-dweller. Having two large libraries’ worth of electronic resources is proving a vast quality of life improvement.

I am curious if you have any hacks you have learned over your years in the greater PA library system! Please email me at smithc2@einetwork.net if you have any issues getting a Philadelphia card or want to swap tricks.

Happy reading.

Cameron R.S. Smith – Cooper-Siegel Community Library

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Academic Angling

The more hours I put into the Information Services Desk at Cooper-Siegel, the more requests for academic information I field. One particular challenge spawned a wild-goose chase for a specific article from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The article, Atrial Fibrillation by Gregory F. Michaud, M.D., et al., published in 2021, was a specific request from a patron looking for medical advice. So, I cracked my knuckles and dove into the obvious ACLA resources.

My first stop was the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s Research Resources page. Full of research materials, I narrowed my search to medical, specifically searching for NEJM. No dice! At this point, I knew searching for a specific and recent article from a major medical journal was going to take some serious Google Fu (desperate, skilled, and persistent online searching).

The next platform of discovery was PubMed. A long-standing, government-run database of over 34 million citations of biomedical literature. PubMed is a great resource for academic, peer-reviewed medical information, albeit anything beyond abstracts (and still, most of those…) are beyond my reckoning. Alas, another roll of the dice and coming up snake eyes on NEJM.

The third stop on this runaway academic search took me to NEJM’s website. Perhaps, beyond logic, I would be gifted with a free preview or something of the like. Unfortunately, like most academic journals, all recent publications were wrapped up tight behind a paywall or sign-up-to-get-X-articles-free account creation. Growing desperate, I turned to an old friend.

The saving grace of many an ill-fated undergraduate research paper, Google Scholar has been there to coddle the most wretched of researchers since 2004. A helpful index of millions of academic articles, Scholar also features a terribly beneficial “cited by” metric, which measures the article’s popularity and usefulness to other academics. I started with the obvious search: “Atrial Fibrillation.” Turns out, this condition is a popular research topic. Then, I tightened my search using the author’s full name and narrowing the date to 2021.

Bingo.

By the grace of the Israeli Association of Emergency Medicine, a file appeared. The full pdf of Atrial Fibrillation (2021)! Breathing a sigh of relief, I downloaded it and swiftly sent it off to the inquiring patron, my quest finished at last.

I wish I had some sort of explanation as to why in the world this specific article was available through this specific organization, and why it popped up on Google Scholar, but, as with all research, it is good to keep in mind: sometimes, you just get lucky.

Happy hunting.

Cameron R.S. Smith | Cooper-Siegel Community Library

P.S. If anyone has any suggestions, recommendations, or advice on how else to tackle the above conundrum or other, similar requests, I am all ears! Don’t hesitate to contact me at: smithc2@coopersiegelcommunitylibrary.org.

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Back to School with Consumer Reports

With the school year right around the corner, back-to-school shopping is in full swing! Consumer Reports is a go-to resource to equip people with the credible, trustworthy information they needed to make informed choices. Not only does CR provide reviews, they also have helpful articles on finding the best deals, health advice and so much more. Check out some of the reviews, recommendations and articles they have to help students of all ages have a successful school year!

-Leigha Lamont, Wilkinsburg Library and Eastridge Branch

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Career Resources

Lots of people are on the hunt for new jobs or looking to expand their career horizons – well your local libraries are here to help! Here are some great resources to help you gain some new skills for a new job, polish your resume, or get some job hunting help.

The first place to start may be here – the Occupational Outlook Handbook. The Occupational Outlook Handbook has a wealth of helpful information for those looking into starting in a new field or just brushing up on what the job market in certain fields looks like. You can do a deep dive into what type of duties a job entails, what the pay rate is, and what the outlook for that job looks like into the future. This website is provided by the U.S. government.

Now that you know what your prospects, duties, and requirements are needed in your new field you may want to begin brushing up on some old skills you may need again or gain some new ones. This is where Udemy can help! Udemy has almost 2,000 courses (including classes in 8 different languages in case you will need to travel for your new job). If you need to learn something new Udemy can help you reach those new learning skills.

You have studied up on your new job and you have actually studied up on the new skills you may need – now it is time to brush up that resume! Tutor.com is here to help! You may think “I don’t need a tutor!” but Tutor.com doesn’t just provide tutors for school age students they also offer resume help for everyone. You can book an appointment, upload your current resume, and sit back and wait for a dedicated tutor to send you some personalized notes to help you really make your resume shine! This is a brilliant service that can really make a difference on getting that interview for that dream job – make use of this excellent service.

If you need some assistance working through the entire job hunting and resume process you may want to get in contact with PA CareerLink. They can assist you at many different points throughout your new job journey so taking a look at their site to see all the services they offer is a good start to this new job process as well.

No matter where you are in the process of getting a new job don’t hesitate to reach out to your local library so that they can help connect you to a myriad of resources to help you get that dream job!

-Adrianne

Northland Public Library

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