Thing 17. ELM Productivity Tools

Wow, I feel that I am in way over my head in Thing 17. I have known that ELM is something so huge, but have wanted to give it a serious try someday. Thankfully our reference librarian has a good understanding of ELM, and I have been very comfortable leaving it all up to her!

To start, I went to the InfoTrac Student Edition database and attempted to do the suggested search for "youth smoking" and set up an RSS feed to Bloglines. After trying a few times and getting nowhere, I read the 23 Things #8 News and deleted ".prodigy.elm4you.org" from the URL as indicated, but it still didn't read it as a valid feed. Somehow though I was able to get the feed on my Favorites Center. I don't prefer having it there, but we'll hope that it works. I did do the email choice too, so I'll wait to see what shows up and where.

Next, I set up an account in Academic Search Premier and followed all the instructions to set up my web pages or personal folder or whatever. I named my web page, added text, and downloaded it to my computer, but I really don't understand what this is all about or what I'm supposed to use it for. I added a search for a particular medical condition to my Favorites Center Feeds also, so we'll see about that one too. I really don't know what I'm doing.

I did the search in ProQuest Newsstand Complete and followed the instructions to create a web page and download the search. Then I emailed the search summary to myself. It worked, but I still don't really understand much of what's happening.

I next created an account with NetLibrary and did a search in eContent as suggested. I found the ebook and the pages that contained "branding", and then I added a note to the Favorites and Notes.

The information available in ELM seems unlimited. I know it can be extremely valuable to those who know how to access all that information easily. For me, however, I know that I have a long, long way to go in comprehending how to reap the benefits of ELM without it being overwhelming. I'm sure learning increases more rapidly with use, but at this point I will still be relying on our reference librarian! I do plan to check out the Webinars that have to do with ELM.

In the midst of my frustrations with Thing 17, I learned that we will be having some staff training on ELM at our library in May. So, there's hope. Meanwhile I am getting some Gale Search Alerts.