BHSL Blog

Mrs. Cohen's Website Pairs

2008-05-04T13:38:00.000-07:00

Here are some links especially for Mrs. Cohen's English classes.

You are going to be given 5 pairs of sites. It is up to you to determine which is reputable and which is not. You will have some excellent clues in some cases and in others it will he hard to determine. You need to answer 5 questions about each pair of sites:

1 - Which of the two sites would be appropriate for a student writing a research paper?
2 - How can you tell?
3 - Was it difficult to determine which site was reputable?
4- Why or why not?
5- What aspects of the disreputable site make it look real?

Fossil Energy: U.S Oil Reserves
or
World Chocolate Supply

Dihydrogyn Monoxide
or
Monosodium Glutamate

Facts About the Civil War
or
The American Civil War Homepage

C.H.O.R.I
or
R.Y.T Hospital

Soil Enrichment
or
Cranium Protection

Do you want to know how to determine the worth of websites on your own?
The University of Michigan will show you how!

What to Look for in a Website

Do you want help formatting your biblopgraphy?

Easybib can help!

Library shirts in time for the holidays!

2007-11-05T07:54:00.000-08:00

The time has come again! The Beverly High School library aides have chosen their design for the year. If you want to purchase the shirts - let me know! The company we are buying them from is www.imagemarket.com go take a look at the colors and styles and let me know what you want or come down to the library and look at the brochure.

Thanks for supporting the library!

Barb

You Can Get Anything You Want With Alice's Search Directories

2007-03-01T04:59:00.000-08:00

My friend Alice, is a phenomenal librarian. Seriously, she is practically famous for a librarian. She has been on the Newbery committee and the Printz medal committee. She sent this email out to her colleagues at the very fancy Winsor School (for Girls) and it gives away most of the secrets of librarianism.

It is, in fact, a nice guide to finding useful, reliable websites.

Dear Colleagues,

Has this ever happened to you? You need to find high quality websites related to your discipline. You go onto Google and do a search, and you get 50 million hits. You don't have time to search through even a fraction of those to find excellent sites that meet your criteria. It is often at that moment that you email one of your beloved librarians and ask, "Do you know of any good websites about ...?"

Well, we might, because we're that good. But I will let you in on a secret. We know where to look to find high quality websites. And I am now going to share that information with you.

When librarians want to find high quality websites, we use internet subject directories. Unlike search engines (e.g. Google), which look for your search terms and return any sites in which those words appear, subject directories are compiled by actual people. Yahoo is an example of a subject directory. But there are also very high quality subject directories compiled by academics--often librarians-- with websites evaluated and selected by librarians and/or specialists in their fields.

Below is a list of just some of the subject directories we use. There are many others; in fact many of these will lead you to other directories, including subject-specific ones.

Internet Public Library
"A public service organization and a learning/teaching environment" from the University of Michigan School of Information. (Riva worked with them when she was a grad student in their program!)

http://www.ipl.org/

Best of the Web
A private organization in which editors evaluate sites according to specified criteria.
http://botw.org/

Librarians' Internet Index: Websites You Can Trust
This tool was begun by a reference librarian in the early 1990s in Berkeley and has remained one of the most trusted and highly used search directories.

http://www.lii.org/

Awesome Library
A k-12 site that is recommended by the American Library Association and many other organizations.
http://www.awesomelibrary.org/

Digital Librarian: a Librarian's Choice of the Best of the Web
http://www.digital-librarian.com/

Intute
As you can infer from the URL, this is a British directory. It "allows access to both subject-specific and cross-subject resources, all of which have been evaluated for their quality and relevance."

http://www.intute.ac.uk/

Alcove 9: An Annotated List of Reference Websites
From the Library of Congress.
http://www.loc.gov/rr/main/alcove9/

The WWW Virtual Library
Started by the guy who invented the World Wide Web (no, not Al Gore), this "is run by a loose confederation of volunteers, who compile pages of key links for particular areas in which they are expert."

http://vlib.org/

Index to Internet Resources from College & Research Library News by Topic
From the American Library Association, a collection of articles on subject-specific web sites.
http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/internetresourcestopic.htm

Also try going to reputable college and university library sites, which often include subject directories. Click on your subject and look for free websites (as opposed to their own subscription-only databases). Here are just a couple of good ones to start with:

Columbia University Libraries Subject Guides
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eguides/

Rutgers University Libraries Subject Research Guides
http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/rr_gateway/research_guides/research_guides.shtml

One final note: there isn't anything wrong with searching Google, but use the advanced search feature and do some limiting, like excluding ".com" sites, looking for sites that have been updated in the past year, etc. Then you, as subject specialists yourselves, can evaluate the sites.

I hope you find this helpful. Do let us know if you have any questions (or if you find anything incredible!).

Cheers,
Alice

Synthesizing With the Fish...

2006-12-08T18:57:00.000-08:00

To help you further your study of Molecular Genetics aka: DNA Replication, aka: Protein Synthesis (my, my there are a lot of names for this life process!), Mrs. Fish welcome you to visit the following websites below.

Some are small videos with animations on the double helix unraveling and the role of enzymes during DNA Replication. Others links have wonderful interactive features that test your abilities in recognizing DNA base pairs to complementary base pairs for m-RNA sequencing during transcription and also give you a visual as to how t-RNA transports the Amino Acids to the Ribosome, and builds up long chains of polypeptides.

Science net links - interactives protein

This one is excellent at testing yourself on the various enzymes involved in DNA replication.

From the Chinese University of Hong Kong
Click on the Protein Synthesis Link

Enzyme review and bonding between nitrogen bases is shown

Have Fun with this Transcription game on Molecular Genetics

Also have some fun with this Transcription and Translation Game – very interactive and positive reinforcement when you get a sequence right!

Really Good Fiction

2006-12-07T10:15:00.000-08:00

Here is a list of books that I book talked for a bunch of classes. A student asked me to write a list. These titles are all really good - in my opinin.

Adams, Douglas –The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy (and sequels)
Anderson, Laurie Halse – Speak
Anonymous – Go Ask Alice
Atwood, Margaret – Alias Grace
Blume, Judy - Forever
Brashares, Ann – The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (and sequels)
Bray, Libba - A Great and Terrible Beauty (and sequel)
Burgess, Anthony – A Clockwork Orange
Carr, Caleb – The Alienist
Chobsky, Stephen – The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Coupland, Douglas – Miss Wyoming
Girlfriend in a Coma
Crutcher, Chris – The Crazy Horse Electric Game
The Sledding Hill
de los Santos, Marissa – Love Walked In
Duncan, Lois – Down a Dark Hall
Killing Mr. Griffin
Eugenides, Jeffery – The Virgin Suicides
Frey, James - A Million Little Pieces
Garden, Nancy – Endgame
Hopkins, Ellen - Burned
King, Stephen – The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
The Stand
Misery
Klosterman, Chuck – Fargo Rock City
Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs
Koertge, Ron – Stoner and Spaz
Krovatkin, Christopher – Heavy Metal and You
Mac, Carrie – The Beckoners
McBride, James – The Color of Water
McCourt, Frank – Angela’s Ashes
McCormack, Patricia – Cut
Meyer, L.A. – Bloody Jack (and sequels)
Moore, Alan – V for Vendetta
Watchmen
Morris, Mary McGarry – Vanished
Parkhurst, Caroline – The Dogs of Babel
Rice, Anne – Interview With the Vampire (and sequels)
Salinger, J.D. – Nine Stories
Sebold, Alice – The Lovely Bones
Sones, Sonia – Stop Pretending
Things My Mother Doesn’t Know
Sparks, Nicholas – The Notebook
Thomas, Rob – Rats Saw God
Westerfield, Scott – Uglies (and sequels)
Whitcomb, Laura – A Certain Slant of Light
Vonnegut, Kurt – Slaughterhouse Five
Fahrenheit 451
Zusak, Markus – I am the Messenger
The Book Thief

Biography Resource Center

2006-12-07T06:34:00.000-08:00

For author research you just can't beat Biography Resource Center! This site offers full length biographical entries from reference books. (Remember these are considered "books" when you are citing your sources for a research paper.) There is also a tab for magazine articles which can provide access to reviews and feature pieces that are also fully edited and thus considered "print resources". And even if your writer is fairly new, or writes less literary fiction, or children's books they are still very likely to be represented here.

2006-12-07T06:29:00.000-08:00

A database is not considered an internet source. Even though we access the databases through the internet, they are actually print collections. They are articles, entries, essays, podcasts, transcripts and images that have been through the same editorial process that the printed page goes through.

The databases that we predominantly use at BHS are those available through the Noble website. Once you go to the site you will see a little box on the right that says "reference databases". If you click on that it will take you to the "Answers To Go" page. This is the list of databases that are provided by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners.

Once you choose your database and click on it you will be taken to the MBLC page that looks a little something like this:

Now you need to enter your library card number in the little box that is near the middle of the page and click "go". If you don't have a library card, please leave your resignation at the main office on the way out. If you don't have you library card with you you can use BHS's number which is hanging on the wall of the library over the student computers.

Once you type in your number you will be taken to the database you have chosen and begin the wonderful task of database research!

Searching for Book/Author Information on the Web

2006-12-07T05:54:00.000-08:00

The most valuable piece of information I can give you about searching for information on a book is to put the name of the book in quotes. This tells your search engine that you are only interested in the words in that order. This is very useful if you are looking for information on "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" and not so useful if you are looking for information on "Night".

Many of the hits that you are going to get on any book are commercial hits - where you can purchase the book. One way to remedy this is to use Google's "advanced search" tab located to the right of the search window. It will take you to a page where you can limit your search to the .edu domain which will only cull from educational sites, primarily universities and other learning institutions.

Also, searching for the author's name with the book's title will often lead to the author's personal page. While this is certainly going to be biased in favor of the author's work, there are often links to reviews and interviews that you may find useful.

And now - a few words about Wikipedia.Wikipedia is such a pain in my neck. I love it for its communal nature, but since it gets so many hits, it is nearly always in the top 10 results for any search. It is not that it is full of lies as some would claim, but that it is not always entirely true. It can be a good source for quick background information but little else. Any facts you find here should be double checked in another resource.

For an example - take a look at the interesting entry on Lucy Larcom. See if you can find the cleverly placed misinformation! Also, the site about.com often takes their information directly from Wikipedia making it generally just as unciteable.

Literary Criticism Resources

2006-12-07T05:43:00.000-08:00

Literary Criticism
Originally uploaded by barbfecteau.

BHS Library has an excellent collection of casebooks as well as many volumes of Contemporary Literary Criticism. But the web offers access to literary criticism, particularly of newer writers, that we just can't offer in print. But web-criticism is a dicey business, particularly if you are new to the game. There are a lot of great online book review sources you just need to learn which ones are reliable.

For "the classics" Rutgers Literary Resources on the Net is an excellent resource. "This set of pages is a collection of links to sites on the Internet dealing especially with English and American literature, excluding most single electronic texts, and is limited to collections of information useful to academics. I've excluded most poetry journals, for instance," according to site creator Jack Lynch, PhD.

If you are looking for reviews of more current or popular, but still literary writers, ReviewsOfBooks is wonderful. It is a clearinghouse for full length newspaper and magazine reviews.

Amazon will often reprint reviews from reputable sources like Library Journal or Publishers Weekly which can be convenient for less literary books. Just remember that, while they might help you decidwhetherer or not to buy a particular book, the customer reviews are not citeable because they are not edited the way that the magazine and newspaper reviews are.

Allreaders seemed like a good idea at the time, but it is useless for research. Everyone is referred to as a "resident scholar". Which becomes increasingly more ironic the more of these reviews you read.

Holocaust Book List

2006-12-05T12:33:00.000-08:00

Here is a list of books on the Holocaust for Mrs. Winokur's Facing History class. They are ordered by where they are in the Beverly Public Library because that's just the kind of helpful lister that I am!

YA fiction
Boas, Jonathan: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust
Cormier, Robert: Tunes For Bears To Dance To
Green Bette: Summer of My German Soldier
Isaacs, Anne: Torn Thread
Laird, Christa: Shadow of the Wall
Matas, Carol: After the War
Matas, Carol: Greater Than Angels
Matas, Carol: In My Enemy’s House
Pausewang, Gudrun: The Final Journey
Pressler, Mirjam: Malka
Spiegelman, Art: Maus
Voight, Cynthia: David and Jonathan
YA non-fiction
D804.3.A35 – Adler, David: We Remember the Holocaust
D804.3.P49 – Petit, Jayne: A Place To Hide
D804.3.R64 – Rogasky, Barbara: Smoke and Ashes
D804.66.O73 – Opdyke, Irene: In My Hands
D810.J4.T42 – Tec, Nechama: Dry Tears
DS135.G5.H48654 – Hillman, Laura: I Will Plant You a Lilac Tree
DS135.L53.R34713 – Rabinovici, Achoschana: Thanks To My Mother
DS135.P62H74 – Korenblit and Janger: Until We Meet Again
DS135.R93L8976 – Toll, Nelly S.: Behind the Secret Window
DS135.S55J33 – Bitton-Jackson, Livia: My Bridges of Hope

Children’s fiction

Jung, Reinhardt: Dreaming in Black and White
Radin, Ruth: Escape to the Forest
Reiss, Johanna: The Upstairs Room
Serraillier, Ian: The Silver Sword
Yolen, Jane: The Devil’s Arithmetic

Children’s non-fiction

D802.N4I66 – Ippisch, Hanneke: Sky
D804.3.G72 – Greenfeld, Howard: The Hidden Children
DS135.G5L336 – Perl, Lila: Four Perfect Pebbles
DS135.N6R44 – Reiss, Johanna: The Journey BackDS135.P63L63 – Lobel, Anita: No Pretty Pictures

This can't be right...

2006-11-26T03:22:00.000-08:00

Here are some links especially for Mrs. Cohen's English classes.

Something is very, very wrong with these sites.

Your assignment is to list three things about the site that lead you to believe that these are not reliable.

You also need to list three things that make the sites look real.

Good luck~

World Chocolate Supply

Facts About Beluga Whales

Radioactive Zoo

Dihydrogyn Monoxide

Facts About the Civil War

Velcro Crop

Jim Jones' Nana

Dog Island

Northwest Tree Octopus

Facts About Albert Einstein

Dehydrated Water

Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency

Male Pregnancy

Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie

You say you want [an industrial] revolution...

2006-11-17T06:41:00.000-08:00

Here are some sites hand picked for Mrs. Prodanas' class.
Mmmmm, fresh home grown inventions...

General Industrial Revolution sites:

Library of Congress Timelines

Open Door Site

The Boott Cotton Mills of Lowell, Mass.

Andrew Carnegie, the richest man in the world.

The Power of Water and the Industrial Revolution

Here are some sites about the spinning jenny:

From Spartacus

From About.com

From Cotton Times

Not everyone agrees, do they?

Here are some sites about steam engines:

From About.com

From the University of Dayton

From the University of Rochester

Here are some sites about the flying shuttle:

From About.com

From Open Door

From Cotton Times

Is This War Cold, Or Is It Just Me?

2006-10-26T07:10:00.000-07:00

Here are some excellent vetted sites on the Cold War:

The Avalon Project at Yale Law School
The Avalon Project beings together high quality primary sources for all eras of American History.

Documents Relating to American Foreign Policy In The Cold War
Mount Holyoke provides these government documents.

The Cold War Science & Technology Studies Program
Carnegie Mellon University has an entire program of studies devoted to this topic.

The Harvard Project on Cold War Studies
Another excellent university heard from.

Link-o-rama!

2006-04-11T05:30:00.000-07:00

Here are some excellent links that you may find educationally useful. They are mostly culled from Marylaine Block's Neat, New and Ex Libris newsletter.

Multiple Perspectives
This web page has been created to meet the needs of Multnomah County middle and high school students researching current social issues from multiple perspectives.

How Products Are Made
This is a fun site. For a wide variety of products -- chewing gum, refrigerators, shaving cream, fireworks, frisbees, baby carriers, Braille publications, you name it -- it tells you about the history of the product, the raw materials, and the manufacturing process.

SwarmSketch: Collective sketching of the collective consciousness.
This is intriguing. It gives a term and invites us to draw it, and then consolidates the drawings, keeping or eliminating lines based on people's votes. Browse through the results. This could be how we discover the platonic ideal forms for things.

Flash Animations for Physics
We have been increasingly using Flash animations for illustrating Physics content. This page provides access to those animations which may be of general interest. The animations will appear in a separate window.

Time Magazine Covers Archive
A browsable, searchable archive of covers (or if you prefer, articles) from 1923 to the present. Clicking on the cover takes you to the table of contents for that issue. Some articles are available free online, but full content is restricted to subscribers.

Audobon's First Octavo Edition
The online edition of an 1840 "First Octavo Edition" of Audubon's complete seven volume text, with Audubon's gorgeous images and original
text.

Government Document Search Engine
A much improved search engine for documents from the US, state, and local governments.

Lambiek Comiclopedia
An illustrated compendium of over 7,000 comic artists, listed under last name (or pseudonym). Please update your links to us. If you know of any published comic artists that should be added to the list, send more information.

World War One Sites

2006-04-05T09:43:00.000-07:00

Here are some sites that deal with World War One.

The World War One Document Archive
Brigham Young University Library houses this archive of primary documents from World War I. It has been assembled by volunteers of the World War I Military History List (WWI-L).

Excerpt from A Hundred Years of International Relations
Mount Holyoke College has the the full text of chapter 5 "The Approach to the First World War".

The Great War Series
The War Times Journal brings a selection of primary source documents and images.

Wars and Conflict: World War One
The BBC gives a British perspective on The Great War.

The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century
This is the companion site to the PBS documentary "The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century".

FIrst World War
This site is not peer reviewed, but contains an enormous amount of information.
A companion site to the PBS series.

First Call
American Posters of World War I from the collection of Roger N. Mohovich.

Internet Modern History Sourcebook
From Fordham University

The Great War
The University of Pittsburgh sponsors this site.

Supreme Court Cases from Plessy to Bakke

2006-03-22T11:33:00.000-08:00

Dred Scott

INTRODUCTION TO THE COURT OPINION ON THE DREDD SCOTT CASE from the U.S State Department’s InfoUSA site

Library of Congress Research Guide on Dred Scott

Plessy v. Ferguson

Plessy vs.Ferguson Transcript from the National Archives and Records Administration

INTRODUCTION TO THE COURT OPINION ON THE PLESSY V. FERGUSON CASE from the U.S State Department’s InfoUSA site

Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas

A look at the site of Brown vs Board of Ed. from the National Park Service

Brown vs. Board of Ed. from Washburn University School of Law

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

A site about Bakke created by Street Law and The Supreme Court Historical Society

Cornell University offers the oral arguments from the case

More Mythology Websites

2006-03-20T05:49:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Mrs. Lindquist for providing these links!

Ancient Rome

This website of classical images has been assisted by grants from the Classical Association of the Empire State and the Classical Association of the Atlantic States.

Myths and Legends

Formerly housed at MIT, this private website was created and is maintained by Christopher B. Siren, a professor from UNH.

Greek Mythology

The author of this site, Carlos Parada is author of Genealogical Guide to Greek Mythology , and visiting lecturer at the Department of Classics, Lund University (Sweden). Most of his work in recent years has been dedicated to the creation and improvement of the Greek Mythology Link, an Internet site with free access devoted to the Greek myths and related subjects.

Classic Myths

"This site is designed to draw together the ancient texts and images available on the Web concerning the major figures of Greek and Roman mythology. We were most interested in bringing together the ancient sources and illustrations, but have included some Renaissance images that were just too good to leave out. The site is primarily intended for the use of Greek and Roman Mythology students at the University of Victoria, but feel free to look around!"

Dr. J's Illustrated Guide to the Classical World

The purpose of this site, designed by Dr. Janice Siegel of the Department of foreign languages at the University of Illinois, is to open up the world of classical antiquity to students of all levels.

Countries of the World

2006-03-11T12:25:00.000-08:00

Here are some excellent sites that give an overview of the nations of the world.

The CIA World Factbook

The Library of Congress Country Studies

State Department Background Notes

We are not amused...by these Victorian Era links

2006-03-01T06:34:00.000-08:00

The Victorian Web The University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore
Since January 2000, the University Scholars Programme (USP), a highly selective honors program at the National University of Singapore, has supported the Victorian Web's two websites. Between January 2000 and December 2001 the USP also funded two senior research fellows, Dr. Marjorie Bloy and Dr. Jon van Whye, and a half dozen student assistants, who worked on The Victorian Web Books section and other major projects, including the site's materials on science, technology, and political and social history.

Literary Resources This site is maintaine by Jack Lynch of Rutgers. Most of the sites that are listed include the responsible party along with their academic credentials.

Norton Anthology The Norton Anthology of English Literature offers some excellent information about the Victorian Age in reference to its literature.

The Victorian Literary Studies Archive Mitsuharu Matsuoka of the school of Language and Culture at Nagoya University in Japan has put together a list of well-documented links on Victorian Literature.

Links on Mythology

2006-02-27T11:15:00.000-08:00

Here are some excellent links from School Library Journal.

Bulfinch's Mythology. This site from Bulfinch not only offers "The Age of Fable" but also "The Age of Chivalry" and "Legends of Charlemagne".

The Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. The activities on this site are aimed at younger students, but the information is clear and well presented.

Greek Myths. Another site that uses contemporary language to untangle the complex relationships among the residents of Olympus.

Hercules. The Perseus Project from Tufts University has an extensive set of resources on the ancient world.

Greek Gods and Goddesses. This BBC presents details on 12 ancient gods from Aphrodite to Zeus.