Mad skills and Research Tools

There are several articles on how to up your Google-fu (See: How to become an Ascended Master of Google-fu), but have you considered upping your research skills? The free electronic resources available to you from your library may not be on Google, but require a level of savviness to navigate.

To that end, I cannot imagine being without OED online, CQ Researcher or Business Reference USA. Those have to be my top picks, although I wish more people knew about CQ Researcher, which is excellent if you have to write a research paper, participate in a debate, or simply stay informed.

Anyways, as part of our 23Things exercise, I had to test my research skill. The result:

10a) Sent in. Woot!

10b) Betty Jean McMichael died on Sunday March 16, 2008 and was survived by four sons. Getting this answer mean using the Courier-Journal database to search for "Betty Jean McMichael" for March 2008.

10c) LFPL does have full-text access to both the "British Journal for the History of Philosophy" (03/1998 onward, minus the last 12 months) and "Clinical Medicine and Research" (02/2004 onwards). However, we do not have "Telos". If you want an article though, don't forget our awesome interlibrary loan service.

11a) Morningstar is such an excellent database. I simply searched for the "Vanguard Target 2020". Morning Star pulled up the ticker symbol  Anyways, Duane Kelly manages the Vanguard Target 2020 fund. The overall stewardship grade is a 'B' and Morningstar rates the fund 4 stars.

11b) The journal/magazine/newspaper search really helps with locating the LCD TV article. I simply searched for "Consumer Reports" and found that we had electronic access to CR using "General OneFile". Anyways, the most recent article was from March 2009 titled "Budget Buyer".

11c) Based on Business ReferenceUSA's Custom search for "Coffee shops" in the 40202 zipcode, Starbucks is your leading competitor with 3 stores. A total of 94 such establishments exist in the "402**" area. Wow.

Flickurges

On one level, Flickr demonstrates our strange desire to document our world, whether it be the people around us, beautiful pieces of art, random trash, or those inexplicable, fleeting moments. Yet, documentaries are (possibly by nature) story tellers and in uploading these images, they share  glimpses of their experiences with the larger community. For example, I was able to see photos of protests in Libya that someone took on their camera phone yesterday!

I definitely would recommend The Commons search for anyone wanting to gain access to royalty-free images or graphics for the purpose of creating flyers or graphics to advertise their business. Small business owners often have tight budgets and this would be a great tool for them. 

Lastly, mashups are such a creative way to engage the community. I can already envision ways to use Earth Album together with a larger touch screen computer. What a conversation starter!

(on left: Photo was taken on May 10, 2010 in Byron Bay, New South Wales, AU, using an E-3 by paul (dex))

Twitter + Facebook

The timing of 23 Things could not have been better (for everyone except Mubarak). So I can hop on Twitter and check out what people are saying about his resignation and the future of Egypt. Meanwhile, the Facebook pages of friends in Egypt are flooded with pictures of what is going on right now. At the same time, several people are removing themselves as Facebook friends of Mubarak and he is probably changing the privacy settings on his account. 

Ramblings on Thing #3

In responding to the list under Thing #3, it is important to include Google Finance. To be able to see the fluctuations in the prices of stocks and mutual funds visually is one of the many facets of Google Finance. You can compare and analyze your portfolio easily and obtain pertinent business news in a single, convenient location. You may still need to use print resources to obtain old stock price information, especially if the company has changed names. However, for an initial survey, it is hard to beat a free tool like Google Finance.


Google has made it very easy to study trends via their analytic tools and another resource worth checking out (for patrons or yourself) is Google Trends. It uses the same underlying engine as Google Finance, but it allows you to look at trends in the larger industries.