Orientation to the NBMS Media Center
Essential Question:
What do I need to know in order to locate information for my
Science Expo project?
When can I use the media center and what are the circulation rules?
How is information arranged in the NBMS media center?
What is the best resource for my topic?
How can I become an independent library user?
Day 1:
On the first day of orientation, students will view a Powerpoint of Rules and Regulations for the media center. Included will be information for passes, times students can come in, circulation procedures and computer use. We will talk about future special activities taking place in the media center. Students will play Media Bingo which helps them learn the location of materials and parts of the media center. We will then review how to navigate around the new image on our TechMod 06 computers, log in and out, make folders, save a document, print and restart.
Day 2:
Day 2 we will review the Patron's Catalog, the AR lists, the online services, and the reference and trade books that are related to science. Students will then have an opportunity to browse and "shop" for ideas for their topic for Science Expo.
Patron's Catalog
Just like in your elementary school, we use the Patron's Catalog to help us locate a particular book in the media center. All non fiction books are arranged by Dewey number in numerical order and all fiction books are arranged alphabetically by the author's last name.You can find the Patron's Catalog under Media in the Main Menu of our Dells. The Patron's Catalog is called "Spectrum."You can look up a book by keyword, title, author, or subject.
If I am interested in answering the question: How has the growth of urban areas affected the population of birds?, I could start by looking up birds under Title, just to see what we have and where the materials are located in the media center. Select Title and type in birds in the search box.
Here is the result list:
This window shows the type of material, the call number, the title of the material, the author, the category, how many copies we own and how many are in. The first book is one by Anita Ganeris. By clicking on the title, students find out more about the book.
You can look under Author to see what other books she has written. Select Author and type in Ganeri, Anita in the search box. Click on the magnifying glass to begin the search. Below is the results list. You can see that there are many books by Ganeri but not any more bird books.
Students can also look under Subjects. In this way materials will come up that have to do with birds, but do not necessarily have bird in their title. Select Subject and type birds in the search box.
The list of materials will look like this:
Record the Dewey (call number) and locate the book on the shelf.
How to Access Accelerated Reader lists
The list of AR books can be found in large binders in the media center and also on the NBMS webpage. The resources are divided by author, title, points and level. To see how they look, click on the links below. Remember not all books on the AR list are owned by the NBMS library. You can use the public library or purchase your own copies at local book stores. AR books have a blue dot on their spine. This year we have added 200 new titles to the AR list.
Online Services
North Bethesda subscribes to many online services. Our policy is that when using the internet for research, you begin with one of these sources. You can also access these online sources at home. See Mrs. Paul for the home passwords. Click here to go to the Online Resources page. Bookmark it on your home computer.
Each research lesson will have a webpage with links provided by your teacher and Mrs. Paul. These sites can be selected directly off of our webpage. Here is an example of a webpage with Science Links useful for Science Expo.
The very last place students look is through a search engine. NBMS' favorite search engine is Google. Please never make up a URL. Do not guess and put in http://www.urbanbirds.com.
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