Minitex’s Reference Outreach & Instruction team will be hosting a series of free webinars over the next few months. The first will be, How-To ‘Baloo: What Does it Take to Host a History Day Hullabaloo & What is the Impact on Student Success? Join Minitex and Presenter Jennifer Hootman next Tuesday, November 5, 2013 from 12:00 PM–1:00 PM (Central Time.)
Who Should Attend?
Any library staff or educator interested in learning more about History Day and library Hullabaloos.
Information in this post was provided by MDE, State Library Services.
The Historical Minneapolis Tribune is a great resource for local history, genealogy and History Day research. In collaboration with State Library Services, Proquest has established bi-monthly one-hour webinars that will help you increase your skills and knowledge. Training sessions provide a review of the content and search options as well as strategies for getting to the most relevant articles on your topic.
Sessions are currently scheduled through March 2014 and the full list of free webinars can be viewed at Proquest’s Training Website. We’ve set up a range of days and times designed to fit a variety of schedules; advance registration at the Training page is requested but not required.
If you are interested in scheduling in-person training at your location, or would like more information about the webinars, please contact Jennifer Nelson at 651-582-8791 or jennifer.r.nelson@state.mn.us.
CMLE would like to note two, free webinars being hosted by WebJunction this November!
Learn how innovative partnerships between state and local libraries and their workforce systems can amplify services to meet community employment needs.
Explore stress-reduction skills and strategies to help face challenging situations that impact our personal work styles, our organizations, and the communities we serve.
Also, the following archived webinars are now available online:
All apps-all access!
This week, CMLE’s Recommended Ed Tech Tool is Quixey (beta site.) Quixey is a free, clean, easy-to-use, and uncluttered website that allows users to conduct quick, functional searches for apps. It stills gives you (the end user) the option to search for an app by name, with the added flexibility to also identify a list of apps by specific tasks and functions.
How does it work?
This site uses a proprietary, algorithmic based system to gather data from the web found in blogs, tweets, articles, product descriptions, and even reviews. This information is used to generate a profile for each app. At Quixey’s homepage, a large single search box appears in the middle of the screen. You can enter a task you would like an app to preform, such as reading. Then, a list is created based on the app’s profile along with a brief product description, the cost (if any), and current reviews.
Additional functions:
Why does this matter?
It is easy to become overwhelmed. The market for app development has been growing exponentially since 2008. According to About.com (October 2013), there were 775,000 apps available for download in the iTunes Store in January 2013. Approximately 300,000 of these apps were native to iPad devices. AppBrain (October 2013) estimated app development each month, peeking in June of this year, with approximately 57,000 new apps.
This post was provided by Minitex, a cooperative purchasing and electronic resource service.
Minitext is offering a set of free trials for you to consider in your library now through October 31st. Electronic resources are grouped by theme and include:
Humanities and Social Sciences
For pricing and questions, please email cpers@minitex.umn.edu.