Inspiration, Innovation & Information for school libraries and learning.
by Alice H
Feel like you need another pair of hands in the classroom or library? Or someone else to reinforce your research message?
If you are planning a research or guided inquiry unit for next term, submit a research question to ManyAnswers a couple of weeks in advance about the topic of inquiry. The operators there will then put up a guided inquiry answer that will lead the reader through a search to find the information in a few selected websites. This will include tips on how to search, such as the entry below which suggests speech marks and specific key search terms.
So instead of your students wasting time, aimlessly surfing Google with irrelevant search terms you can then direct your students to the ManyAnswers site where they can be guided in the internet searching by using this “ answer” which will free you up to work one on one with the students.
The AnyQuestions service is also available for your students to use for one on one reference librarian support through chat software or you can book in for a class demonstration for the whole class to view a guided inquiry transaction on your topic though a data show.
Both these services are available in te reo Māori: Uiangāpātai and Whakautumaha.
Here is an example of a Many Answers Entry:
By Amy guest blogger from the Alexander Turnbull Library
For 15 years Timeframes has been a great site for finding digitised heritage content from the largest public collection of photographs in New Zealand, the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. You may have used it. You may have also used its content delivered through DigitalNZ or Matapihi.
However, 15 real-time years is roughly 65 digital years and Timeframes is now gracefully retiring from the public arena; going to do a lot of gardening and go for long walks on the beach and …. Ah, what was I saying? Timeframes has been a great service for people to find images online, but it has come to the end of its working life.
Replacing it as the premium channel for finding and browsing the digitised, born-digital and physical collections of the National Library and the Alexander Turnbull Library is the National Library online channel or Beta, as it’s currently known.
I would love you go have a play with this brand new service and let the library know what works for you, and what doesn’t - there’s a feedback opportunity on every single page. We are still developing and changing the site, so what you say could make a real difference to what we do. Really.
In Beta, you can dive into nearly half a million digital photographs, paintings, drawings and many other different types of images alongside all of the published collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library and National Library, including the books that you can borrow for your classroom or library.
The team that is developing this new discovery platform is pretty excited about the large size of the images, the continuous scrolling gallery and the fact that all the huge collections of the library, from an old newspaper article to a digital cartoon, will show up together in response to your search.
Would you use this site? For what? If not why not? I look forward to your questions and suggestions.
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