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.