If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about the online resource Tutor.com, now’s your chance. Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and your local library are hosting training sessions for staff and patrons.
The staff-focused training is a quick and comprehensive walk-through of Tutor.com. This training session will equip you with the knowledge and skills that you need to help patrons navigate the resource and market its features.
There will be two trainings offered for the public. The first is an introduction to Tutor.com, how to access it, as well as its many features, such as live tutoring and homework help. The second training is focused on SAT/ACT prep and how Tutor.com can offer support.
All webinars will be recorded and shared with all registrants, so if the time doesn’t work for you or your patrons, don’t worry!
If you’ve ever assisted a patron with an interlibrary loan request, then you know that it can sometimes be a challenge to find bibliographic information about the item that they want. The website WorldCat is a great solution. WorldCat connects you to more than 10,000 libraries worldwide and searches a number of different formats, including DVDs, CDs, and articles.
When you open the record of an item, it lists the Author, Publisher, ISBN, and OCLC number. For DVDs, the record also lists the actors who starred in a film or TV show, which can be helpful when there are multiple records with the same title. From there, you can simply copy and paste the information into the ILL form.
There is so much going on in the world, sometimes it feels like it’s hard to keep up. You may read news stories about far-away countries and regions that you only know by name (or never heard of!). Fortunately, there are resources to help brief you on the facts.
Explore the great, wide world with the CIA World Factbook. This detailed database provides all of the basic facts about over 260+ world entities. Learn about the history, geography, environment, government and transnational issues of each country/region.
The World Factbook provides a variety of concise information. From land area to coastlines, languages to population density – you can learn as much or as little as you want about any region.
There is even a handy one-page summary for each country.
Traveling to a specific country? Get summarized travel facts on The World Factbook. Find information on VISA/Passport requirements, plug types, cultural practices, and even tipping guidelines. There is also up-to-date information regarding COVID-19 travel to each country.
The World Factbook is a great resource for research, student projects or anyone with an interest!
Helping a patron search for images of dress styles from the turn of the century for their school report? Want to see what an electric car looked like in the 1970s? Or maybe you need photographic evidence of a building that you swear used to be somewhere so you can win a bet with your friends?
Look no further than the Library of Congress (LOC) Prints & Photograph collection!
This collection has records for over 1 million photographs, prints and drawings dating back over 1,000 years. The majority of the collection is primarily from the 19th & 20th centuries and covers a large span of topics, including: architecture, portraits, military, sports and daily life.
Quickly narrow down your search by subject, format, collection, date, contributor, etc., with the easily-accessible filters in the left-hand column. Then download high-quality versions of the images you find – from JPEG to PNG to TIFF.
And when you find one image you like…
…scroll down for additional suggestions for images related to that record.
One downside of this valuable site that must be mentioned is how often this message appears:
“Full online access to this resource is only available at the Library of Congress.” Records with this message are such a tease, though sometimes the metadata included in the record can be very helpful. Other times, these listings can link you to additional useful images or collections that are available to view full-scale images online.
Fortunately, there is a way to avoid this dreaded message altogether: use the “Access Condition” filter on the left to select “Available Online.” This narrows the results to show only records that have viewable images. Huzzah!
While the LOC Prints & Photographs collection is helpful to search, it is equally as fun to browse.
There are curated collections available. Some are cumbersome to navigate (e.g. the Lewis Carroll Scrapbooks and Prairie Settlement collections) but others are very easy to access (e.g. African American Photographs Assembled for 1900 Paris Exposition & Aaron Copeland Collection). In the image below, you can see that certain collections have links below the descriptions that say “Collection Items.” Those are the collections that are easier to navigate.
