Ready Reference on the Internet

Instructor: Carole Leita

Ready Reference on the Internet: 2003

New resources each year!

The phone's ringing, there's a line at the desk, and you're trying to:

• Find current gas price averages for California metropolitan areas.
• Check to see if a particular acupunturist is licensed by the state.
• Discover the rules on embalming.
• Help a patron identify a pill based on its description.

Increasingly, these types of questions can be quickly answered via the Internet.

Workshop Description: This all-day hands-on workshop will teach you the tools to mine the Internet for quick answers to questions that in the past you couldn't answer or had to refer elsewhere. It will focus on the ins and outs of using the Librarians' Index to the Internet as your online ready reference desk as well as discovering and accessing the many specialized databases on the Internet that don't get indexed by the search engines.

Highlights: Using hands-on exercises, a packet of handouts, and a specially prepared bookmarks file (that you'll take home with you on a disk), this workshop will cover the following topics:

• Specialized Databases Search Tools:
  • Librarians' Index to the Internet
  • Direct Search Page
  • Search Systems
• Specialized Databases for questions on topics such as:
  • Consumer Information
  • Art & music
  • Employment
  • Health & medicine
  • Law & politics
  • Statistics

Who should attend: Anyone who answers questions in a library.

Prerequisites:

• comfortable using a mouse
• able to navigate the Web using URLs, browser menus, and toolbars
• familiar with basic Web terminology

Check-in: 8:30 to 9 AM Instruction: 9 AM to 4:30 PM