The Minitex is a publicly supported network of academic, public, state agency, and special libraries working cooperatively to provide and improve library service to patrons in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

REFERENCE NOTESAn Information and Resouurce Sharing Program of the Minnesota Office of Higher Education and the University of Minnesota Libraries

MinitexUniversity of Minnesota15 Andersen Library222 21st Avenue SouthMinneapolis, MN 55455-0439

It’s Back to School!Jennifer Hootman

It’s that time of year again when our kids and teens head back to school – many carrying book bags filled with new school supplies, some with new sneakers and clothes, and all starting a fresh new school year.

What better way to help welcome back the students than to pack the fall semester with library programs and services that grab the attention of the reluctant, ease the tensions of the nervous, and relate to the eager students?

Here are a few back to school library programs running this fall that may spark some ideas.

• Allen County Public Library (IN) has developed a list of books, DVDs, and websites for kids and parents that are about starting school (http://www.acpl.lib.in.us/children/ school.html). Some of their programs, however, include “Rock Band,” “Cooking School,” “Pokemon League,” “Homeschool Book Group,” “BINGO 4 Books,” and “Welcome Back Party.” For more, see their programs & events calendar (http://www.acpl.lib.in.us/ programs/index.html).

• Indianapolis Marion County Library (IN) maintains their Teen Scene website with an August 10th “Back to School” post alerting students to their Homework Help and a list of books to kick off the school year (http://www.imcpl.org/teenscene/?tag=back-to-school). Teen Scene also has “Share It!” “Do It!” and “Read It!” sections. “Do It!” lists all the upcoming events and programs for teens such as “Teen Book Club,” “Need a Job? Beginner Resumes,” “Blog Party,” “Open Wii Gaming,” “Manga and Anime Club,” “A Celebration of Latin Music and Dance: Zumba,” and much more (http://www.imcpl.org/teenscene/?page_id=2)!

• Brooklyn Public Library (NY) has a number of programs lined up on their events calendar that help children meet other children who enjoy similar activities such as “Ridge Kids” (Meet other kids who enjoy writing, ages 7 to 10.), “Play Station Gaming” (Join your friends and meet new ones while playing video games.), and “Homework Help” (Get free homework help from a trained adult volunteer. For grades 1 through 8.) They also have some terrific volunteer programs for teens such as “After-School Homework Helper,” “Computer Coach,” “School Year Book Buddy,” and “Today’s Teens, Tomorrow’s Techies” (http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/support/volunteer/).

• Rochester Public Library (MN) offers its teen patrons heading back to school live homework help with Brainfuse (starting Sept. 1), an upcoming writing contest (ages 10-18) for poetry and short stories (http://www.rochesterpubliclibrary.org/teens/ documents/writingflyer.pdf) and a teen volunteer program (ages 12-18) called “Group

August 2009

Inside This Issue

It’s Back to School! 1

ELM Database Highlights:

Back to School 2

Downloadable Slide

Presentation to Help

Promote ELM to Teachers 2

Spotlight on ELM– OAIster 3

MEMO Conference 3

Minitex Reference Fall

Conference Calendar 3

Page 2

of Advising Teens” (http://www.rochesterpubliclibrary.org/ teens/documents/GOATAd.pdf). Also filling their events calendar is “Hooray for Saturday!” (special guests or films held throughout the school year), “Sit…Stay…Read Program” (20-minute reading sessions with a certified therapy dog), “Youth Acting Class” (ages 14-18), “Young Adult Writer’s Group,” and “Homework Assistance Study Table” (http://evanced.info/rochester/evanced/ eventcalendar.asp).

• San Diego County Library (CA) supports their teens with a Teen Lounge website offering direct links to live homework help with Brainfuse, information on colleges and careers (including finding a job and help with resumes); information on taking a “gap year” (for teens thinking about volunteering, working, or traveling before heading to college), “Teen Advisory Group,” and events such as “Read Beyond Reality Teen Bookmark Contest,” “Hip Hop Dance Class,” “Express Yourself! Teen Book Discussion Group,” and “Play Station and Wii” games (http://dbpcosdcsgt.co.san-diego.ca.us/ screens/teenlounge/index.html).

If you’re looking for some back to school library program-ming and services ideas, hopefully some of these men-tioned will help. There is such a wide variety of program-ming with unlimited possibilities! For more ideas on developing library programs, check out our DVD of the College of DuPage teleconference “Programming Through the Ages” (https://www.minitex.umn.edu/events/teleconferences/checkout.aspx).

Let us know what kinds of program and services your library has scheduled for school-age children – we’d love to hear from you and highlight what Minnesota libraries are doing in our subsequent newsletter issues! Drop us a line at: mtxref@umn.edu.

ELM Database Highlights: Back to SchoolMatt Lee

All across the country, schoolchildren have a feeling of dread in their stomachs. Back to school. The words ring from the covers of direct mail catalogs like funeral bells. While students cling to the last moments of summer vaca-tion, librarians from schools, colleges, and public libraries are gearing up for their return, although they likely feel more excitement than dread.

With that in mind, we thought we’d highlight just a few of the new ELM databases introduced in July that can help make the transition into that first homework assignment of the year a little less traumatic.

Britannica Online (School or Public or Academic Editions- 3 versions to meet user needs!)A suite of authoritative encyclopedia content for students from pre-school to college.

Points of View Reference CenterPro vs. con arguments for over 250 current and controversial issues.

Science Reference CenterA collection of full-text encyclopedias, reference books, and periodicals related to the hard sciences.

General Science CollectionFull-text articles from hundreds of scholarly science periodicals.

Investigate all of the new ELM databases (along with veteran ELM resources like Kids InfoBits and Discovering Collection) at http://elm4you.org. Learn all you need to know about setting up direct links to them from your library website at http://minitex.umn.edu/elm/access.aspx. Good luck this school year!

Downloadable Slide Presentation to Help Promote ELM to TeachersMatt Lee

All of the new ELM databases may have your head swim-ming. If you’re a media specialist and are thinking about promoting them to teachers (who barely have time to say ‘hi’ in the hallway this time of year let alone slog through dozens of new databases), you’re likely feeling daunted. Minitex can help. We just posted a downloadable and cus-tomizable PowerPoint presentation online that you can use to highlight just those ELM databases of use in the class-room. Save it, edit it, add your info to it, and then use it as a jumping off point to talk about all of the resources easily available through your school’s media center.

You’ll find the PowerPoint posted to the WebJunction MN group “Promoting Your Media Center to Teachers,” by look-ing under the Documents tab. You need not create a Web-Junction account or join the group to access the document, but you might consider it, especially if you have a library promotion question to ask or good story to share.

Find the group at http://mn.webjunction.org/lmcpromo.

Spotlight on ELM– OAIsterBeth Staats

OAIster, created in partnership by the University of Michigan and OCLC, is one of the “new” ELM databases offered to Minnesota residents. OAIster is a union catalog of over 22 million digital resources from over 1,100 contributors. OAIs-ter “provides access to these digital resources by ‘harvesting’ their descriptive metadata.” Through OAIster, you can locate videos, images, audio files, scanned books or movies, imag-es, born-digital items, and scanned datasets like download-able statistics files. These resources are often hidden from searchers using Google or Yahoo and are made available by OAI-PMH (the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting).

Searching OAIster is easy. It can be searched by Title, Au-thor/Creator, Subject, Language or Entire Record. Searches can also be limited by resource type (text, image, audio, video, dataset) and sorted by title, author, date and hit fre-quency. Results allow further limiting by data contributor (i.e., where the record was harvested from). The results list al-lows you to link directly to the digitized content. You retrieve not only descriptions (metadata) about resources, but you have access to the real digital resources. For instance, instead of just the catalog records of a slide collection of Van Gogh’s works, you are able to view images of the actual works.

MEMO Conference

MEMO (Minnesota Educational Media Organization) will be holding its annual fall conference, School 2.0: Get Connect-ed!, from October 1 – 3 at the Rochester Mayo Civic Center. Keynote speakers include Dr. Scott McLeod, Anita Beaman and Amy Eberts, and author Lynne Jonell. The conference includes over 60 breakout sessions with regional school li-brary and school technology experts, visits from 20 regional authors, and a large vendor area. Registration materials are available on the MEMO website at http://memotech.ning.com. MEMO members include school library media special-ists, technology integrationists, technology staff and technol-ogy coordinators.

Minitex Reference Fall Conference CalendarMatt Lee

October seems to be the month when Minnesota library staff come together to talk about the state of the art in library services across our state. This Fall, that conference line up sounds especially interesting, and Minitex Reference is very lucky to be a small part of some of the goings-on. Here’s a run down of what’s coming up, and where you can find us if you’d like to stop and say “Hi.”

MEMO / School 2.0: Get Connected / October 1-4 / Rochester, MN

Minitex-hosted sessions:• The Only Stupid Question Is the One You Don’t Dare AskMN!• Media Center Promotion: Using Webjunction MN to Share Library Outreach Ideas• MnKnows: Online Resources for Minnesotans

Conference registration and information: http://memotech.ning.com/

MLA / Challenges, Choices, Change / October 14-16 / St. Cloud, MN

Minitex-hosted sessions:• MnKnows: Dig Deeper @ Your Library (panel)• Best Practices for Creating Online Tutorials

Find out more at: http://mnlibraryassociation.org/mlaconference/

Education MN / October 15-17 / St. Paul, MN

Minitex-hosted session:• MnKnows: Online Resources for Minnesotans

Learn more at: http://www.educationminnesota.org/events/conference.aspx

Page 3

1973: Golda Meir and Pope Paul VI at the Vatican Fall MEMO Conference

Hatch Show Print, Printer; 30 Years after Nashville

Skyline: Bob Dylan and His Band (Volunteer Voices:

The Growth of Democracy in Tennessee (single images))

Butler Portrait of Abraham Lincoln

MinitexUniversity of Minnesota15 Andersen Library222 21st Avenue SouthMinneapolis, MN 55455-0439

RefeRence notes

MinitexUniversity of Minnesota, 15 Andersen Library

222 21st Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0439

Reference Phone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 612-624-4150, WATS 800-462-5348

Reference Fax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 612-624-4508

Hootman, Jennifer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 612-624-2924, hootm001@umn .edu

Lee, Matt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 612-626-9843, leems001@umn .edu

Parker, Mary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 612-624-1024, m-park1@umn .edu

Pfahl, Carla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .612-626-6845, pfahl001@umn .edu

Staats, Beth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 612-624-7873, fried004@umn .edu

Main Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www .minitex .umn .edu

Reference Email . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . mtxref@umn .edu

Office Hours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Mon-Fri ., 8:00 a .m . - 4:30 p .m .

Reference Intake Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . https://www .minitex .umn .edu/reference/request/

The Institute of Museum and Library Services, a Federal agency that fosters innovation, leadership, and a lifetime of learning, and State Library Services, the Minnesota state library agency, supports

Minitex Reference Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA).

The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and employer .

Permission to reprint with appropriate acknowledgement is granted .

Printed on recycled and recyclable paper with 10 percent postconsumer material .

This publication is available in alternative formats upon request . Please contact Elly Gustafson Held: (612) 624-1081, (800) 462-5348 or ellygh@umn .edu .

For address and name changes, please send a message to mtxref@umn .edu The Minitex is a publicly supported network of academic, public, state agency, and special libraries working cooperatively to provide and improve library service to patrons in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

REFERENCE NOTESAn Information and Resouurce Sharing Program of the Minnesota Office of Higher Education and the University of Minnesota Libraries

MinitexUniversity of Minnesota15 Andersen Library222 21st Avenue SouthMinneapolis, MN 55455-0439