Back to School – EBSCO eBooks

With school back in session, the EBSCO ebook’s non-fictebscoebooksion collection is ready to provide teen and adult students with a wide variety of full-text sources.

Search or browse by category, such as Biography, Education, History, Literature, Philosophy, and Science.

Users are required to create a free account and can check out up to 10 items at one time.

Books can be read online or downloaded and read offline with Adobe Digital Editions.

The unique Notetaking feature allows researchers to take notes on eBooks and save them to their EBSCOhost folder for later viewing.

A quick reference User Guide is available to assist with requirements and set-up.

Rob / Bethel Park

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Health Information Made Plain

Providing medical information is always a challenge. Adding to the difficulty is the mismatch between medical terminology and the average reading skills of many Americans.

According to a study conducted last year by the U. S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy, 32 million adults in the U.S. can’t read. And 21 percent of adults in the U.S. read below a 5th grade level.

The National Library of Medicine has been working hard to provide medical information that uses plain language to describe medical issues. Plain language substitutes everyday words for medical jargon, uses short sentences, and highlights key points.

medlineplusTo access the easy-to-read medical literature that the National Library of Medicine has developed, visit MedlinePlus (available on the Find Articles and CLP database pages) and click on the “easy-to-read” tab in the bottom right-hand corner. (“Easy-to-read” articles will also appear whenever you are reading about a topic that has also been written about in plain language.)

MedlinePlus is a great resource. It contains drug information, interactive tutorials, and late-breaking stories about medical issues. The spelling, definition, and pronunciation of medical terms are always a click away.

It has links to health information in 44 languages. It has medical information in plain language. And it’s free.

Mary Lee (Northland)

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Playlists made simple…

When touting our digital resources to patrons, Freegal is one of the easiest to get excited about. For district libraries, Freegal is still a pretty new service and I notice many patrons are unaware they now have access to it. Recent upgrades also make Freegal an even better resource to highlight in any patron interaction. Mentioning that Freegal requires no software to download and no wait periods is a big plus for patrons, as well. Especially as new CDs in the physical collection often have long hold lists.

Navigation is available in standard English, as well as Spanish, French, and Italian. These options are available at the bottom of the page.

Searching has been made easier, as well. In one search query, an artist and song title can be combined so users can get to content faster.

The home page also highlights popular artists graphically with headshots displayed under the week’s top albums and singles.

There’s also a nice feature that shows our system’s top 10 and the top 10 across the United States. You can find these lists linked under Most Popular at the top of the page.

Also, be sure to check out the Genres page linked from the top of the screen. This really shows how wide-ranging Freegal’s offerings are: from Barbra Streisand to Arabic pop, there are music more than 100 countries represented!

Jeff (South Park)

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Zinio Updates

Hey Folks,

There have been some recent improvements to our Zinio service that you should know about:

  • Patrons can now link to their previously checked-out magazines without checking out an additional magazine.  All they have to do is click the “start reading” link in the upper-right corner of the library collection page.
  • Patrons may now continue browsing and check out multiple magazine issues before going to their personal Zinio.com account to read them. Previously they had to toggle back and forth for each new magazine.

We’ve also rearranged the Zinio page!  The first 36 cover images are some of the more popular titles. The remaining covers are still arranged alphabetically.

zinio front page

Patrons looking for a specific title can still easily find what they are looking for using the “Title Search” box at the top of the page. This change will allow new users to immediately see the variety of titles we offer.

And lastly, did you know you (and our patrons, of course) can share articles with friends via email using the iPad Zinio app? Here’s how: http://bit.ly/1pakRt7.

Sarah (CLP)

 

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