Climbing the ELM

ELM is the Electronic Library for Minnesota, which is available by direct link on the MHS Library's in-house homepage or via the ELM portal. (Isn't it nice that you don't need to use your library card number anymore?!)

I'm so glad this was one of the "things." We don't use ELM as much as a public library probably does, so I wasn't familiar with most of these tools. I can see great uses for me personally, for helping students (especially), and for MHS staffers in other departments. I already e-mailed an e-book citation that I found (while looking for the "101 Ways to Promote Your Web Site") to someone in HR.

I also set up an RSS feed for the search alert "Library 2.0" in EBSCO's Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts. I got a lot of feeds on that one!

I love NetLibrary! I hadn't used that before and I think it's really cool. I can see lots of uses both for NetLibrary itself and for its tools. It's great being able to leave yourself electronic notes about citations that you find, to share things with others, and even to collaborate with colleagues.

I'm also discovering how prevalent the tools are all over the web that give you bibliographic citations for sources formatted according to the various style manuals. That's a question we get constantly from students and I tend to be more familiar with Chicago and Turabian than I am with MLA or APA, so it's nice to have somewhere to look. Now if we could just get them to do citations for our manuscript and government archives records!