Week 11 - Halfway there!

Whenever my husband has the crew raising the sails on the American Eagle, he directs the boys on the throat and the peak when to haul away. The passengers who are willing lend a hand which can be a little bit exhausting and involves pulling hand over hand...and NOT backing up. John thinks it is hilarious to yell "Halfway there!" to the perspiring volunteers when they are actually very close to done. 'Nuff said.

Exploring some of the offerings of MARVEL gave me a chance to dabble a bit in areas in which I was not necessarily comfortable. I think my most positive experience was using Ancestry.com at the public library. That was totally fun and made me much more interested in all the time my dear husband spends online researching his ancestors. (Up until my Ancestry experience, I would just say, "Looking up more dead people, dear? Pretty sure they're still dead.") Seeing the actual documents connected to my father-in-law and my own grandfather was pretty exciting, and I hope I'll be able to get my husband to Rockport Public Library to do some more exploring on his own. (Way back when we were expecting children, he suggested that if we had a girl we name her "Bovina," an old family name. Not on my watch!)

I am pretty psyched to continue using MARVEL's 3 M's as I call them: Middle Search Plus, MasterFile Premier, and MAS Ultra. These are our main access to magazine articles at this point. With budget cuts, our little school library doesn't get a single print subscription. In addition, the Consumer Health database is a goldmine for health classes. We use ERIC on a regular basis to investigate education research, best practices, etc. And I will continue to encourage my munchkins at the middle school to use the Britannica Online School Edition K12 because the entries are on 3 reading levels and the Works Cited is at the bottom of every entry...not to mention the wealth of connected media files.

So, many many thanks to the good folks of our wonderful state library for putting on the Marvelous Maine Invitational and encouraging us to make better use of this incredible resource. Strength in numbers!