ER Challenge: Week 5 netLibrary

1. You said something I'm interested in so00000--since I saw somewhere in a description of netLibrary that there are craft books, I looked for something on embroidery. Typing in "embroidery" in the full-text box pulled up about 850 books, most of which mentioned embroidery in the description of the book, none in the titles (as far as I searched). Inclusion of embroidery in book descriptions usually indicated the book was about a country, or the art work/crafts of particular countries, or even about marketing of businesses that might include embroidery. Interesting, but not what I was actually looking for--embroidery patterns on fabrics, how-to illustrations of different stitches, etc. So, back to the drawing board, tried a keyword search on embroidery and, aha, no results. No wonder I didn't find what I was looking for in the full-text results. However, since I'm pretty easily distracted and somewhat interested in quilting, I spent some time perusing the ebook The Complete Idiot's Guide to Quilting (c1998) that popped up during my original search. And this is cool, seeing the whole book on my computer screen, hopping around through the table of contents, seeing the quilting illustrations really clearly. In the lower left corner there was even a link offering the option to search the contents of the ebook for "embroidery" within the content of ths book. Did that and found 2 pages containing suggestions for using embroidery in quilting projects. To this quilting pre-novice's eyes, this looked like a great beginner's guide to quilting. Had something comparable been available on embroidery, I'd likely have been just as impressed.

2. Ooh, here's a good one: Please Don't Wish Me a Merry Christmas: a Critical History of the Separation of Church & State by Stephen Feldman
another: Letters, by Thomas Jefferson (primary source-type stuff, good for History Day projects)
and: Our Elusive Constitution: Silences, Paradoxes, Priorities, by Daniel N. Hoffman
and: The Illustrated Dictionary of Consitutional Concepts, by Robert Maddex
and: A Companion to the U.S. Constitution and Its Amendments, by John R. Vile
3. 83 books on western history published by University of Oklahoma Press. Not all about Oklahoma by any means, many included about SD--for example, #41 in list: Rapid City Indian School 1898-1933. I'd forgotten that there was an Indian school in RC at one time. Published in 1999. Students would appreciate clicking on the colored numbers to bring up the footnote citations. I flipped through and read a few pp of Chapter 2 which discussed nutrition issues at the school and referred to a complaint from a Lower Brule parent whose daughter was attending the school. The parent suggested that his daughter, who'd complained of being underfed, could come home and be educated at the local public school.

Students would use netLibrary and like it if instructors who'd done a little pre-planning referred them to the resource. Much of value to be found with minimal digging--and reliable, too.