CINAHL

I’ve been teaching myself how to use CINAHL, the database of nursing and allied health literature from EBSCO. I’m not doing it because I am inherently interested in the database, but I’m learning it so that I’ll be able to teach a class on it. A class that’s this afternoon, gulp.

But you know what? CINAHL is actually pretty interesting. There are of course some things that I don’t like about it, but overall I think it’s built in a way that makes sense, and it can be used by people who are Good At Computers as well as by people who have to work, dammit, and can’t spend a lot of time learning a particular database.

While I am a pretty bush league teacher at the moment, I like teaching. And I’m pretty good at picking up something quickly in order to be able to teach it to other people. That’s a skill I didn’t even know I had until I recently started learning EndNote/Zotero/Reference Manager–I’m the new trainer for those programs at my library.

Power searching with Google

I’m teaching a class about how to become a strong searcher using Google. I thought I knew a lot about Google’s search tricks, but I have learned an enormous amount in the past few days. For example, did you know that you can find a huge amount of local information merely by entering your zip code or city? So if I wanted to see what time the sun rises or sets in my neighborhood, I could just type “sunrise 37206” or “sunset Nashville.” You can also do this with movies and other kinds of events. There are so many ways to use Google, it’s pretty amazing.