Meeting the Great Winslow Homer

              Little l.a. was wandering along in the Land of Marvel when she spotted the sign for the City of Maine Newstand. Having always been interested in news she started toward the city when she was waylaid by the nasty book virus. The virus forced her to delay her journey for a couple of days. After a speedy recovery she entered the City of Maine Newstand. At first she was overwhelmed by all the information that she felt she would never make it through this land. That’s when she decided to look for the Great “Winslow Homer”; he would show her the way. Winslow was such an interesting fellow and he made the City of Maine Newstand such a wonderful place to visit that in no time Little l.a. felt she had lived there all her life. Little l.a. enjoyed her time in the city but knew it was time to move on and explore more of the Land of Marvel. She heard of a marvelous village that was all about arts and crafts so she can hardly wait for what was to come…
             I found searching in Marvel’s Newspapers and Maine’s Newstand quite easy and user friendly. I did a basic search about “Winslow Homer” and found many fascinating articles about him. I then did an advanced search with “Winslow Homer” and added “Prouts Neck”. This narrowed my search down to articles about Winslow Homer’s studio located in Prouts Neck, Maine.   I was pleasantly surprised on how I could further narrow down the articles with the options on the right side bar. You can further narrow down articles to particular newspaper journals, a set time or location. 

            Creating a “My Research” account was easy and I liked how you could personalize your preferences on how to search and how your results were displayed. I did have a problem creating a search alert. Every time I tried I got the following error “A server error caused your requested action to fail. Please try again. Contact Us if the problem persists” Other things I liked about the database were you could share your article through twitter, email and Facebook. I also liked that you can get a full citation of your article which I feel would be helpful for many of our students.
    I explained Marvel this week to a mother and her son who was doing research on a particular American Indian tribe for school. They were excited to know that they had this resource available to them at home to use at their own time.
     My book recommendation for the week is The Duckling Gets a Cookie!?  by Mo Willems. This funny and zany book is a favorite to read at storytime and it also tells of the importance of asking for things politely.