Challenge #7 - Learning more about Outlook - Due December 4

We use Outlook everyday but when was the last time you spent some time learning how to use it better? Here are some instructions on some useful features and opportunities to learn more advanced features in depth. This was originally created for Outlook 2003 but with our transition to Outlook 2007 rapidly approaching alternative links for Outlook 2007 are also provided.
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Ever wanted to undelete something but it isn’t in your Deleted folder anymore? Well, if it has only been a few days or a week or so since you deleted the mail, there is a chance to recover it.

Recover deleted items or folders that were permanently deleted

1. Open your Deleted items folder
2. On the Tools menu, click Recover Deleted Items. You can sort the items by Subject, Deleted on Date or From sender to make it easier to find what you want.

3. In the list, click the item or folder you want to retrieve, and then click the Recover Selected Items icon. The item is recovered and saved in the Deleted Items folder. From there you can move back to your Inbox or any other folder.

Outlook 2007 Recovering Deleted items instructions
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Ever wanted to ask an opinion on an issue or even decide when or where a holiday celebration should be held? Wouldn’t a quick way of keeping track of responses help?

Add voting buttons to an email message

1.In the message you are composing, click Options on the menu.
2. Select the Use voting buttons check box, and then enter the voting button names you want to use in the box. The default is Accept;Reject;

3. To create your own voting button names, delete the default button names, and then type any text you want. Separate the button names with semicolons.
4. Under Delivery options, select the Save sent message to check box. To select a folder other than the Sent Items folder, click Browse.
5. Click Close, and then click Send.

To see the results of a vote
1. Open the original message. This message is usually located in the Sent Items folder.
3. Click the Tracking tab. (You have to open the responses in your Inbox before they will be tracked.)

Outlook 2007 voting buttons instructions. (if you don't want to watch the demo, there is a link on the page to written instructions)

Now for some more advanced features….(don't panic, you don't have to do everything listed below)

Scheduling meetings on Outlook.

Even if your staff doesn't use their Outlook calendar as their main calendar you can save a lot of time by scheduling meetings on Outlook. Just tracking who can make it or not is more efficient. This online class from Microsoft Support for Outlook 2003 takes 50 minutes.

Want to learn scheduling meetings but can’t do the full course? Here are the basics (click on the “Schedule an in-person meeting” link)

Outlook 2007 Scheduling meetings
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Finding emails

Online class on finding items in Outlook – full course 40 minutes

Can’t do the whole course? This link will give you specific instructions for finding items with different search features.

Outlook 2007 finding emails with Instant Search (if you don't want to watch the demo, there is a link on this page with written instructions)

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Overflowing Mailbox – how to deal with it

Online class on managing your Mailbox Size – full course 40 minutes

Can’t do the whole course? Then try these two highlights from the course-

Viewing and processing emails by size and understanding what makes a big email
4 quick tips for slimming down your email box

Outlook 2007 Managing your mailbox Part I here (30 minutes)
Outlook 2007 Managing your mailbox Part 2 here (20 minutes)
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To complete this challenge:

1. Take your choice of one of the above mentioned Outlook 2003 courses or one of the other 29 Outlook 2003 courses listed here and blog about how you plan to use what you’ve learned at work. Or take one of the 23 Outlook 2007 courses listed here and blog about how to you plan to use what you've learned at work.

2. Send an email with voting buttons to the Branch Managers Challenge mailbox. Since many staff read their email in preview mode where you can’t see the voting buttons, you are strongly advised to include the message at the beginning that the email contains voting buttons and to see them the message must be opened completely. Do not send the voting email to the regular challenge gmail account. The voting buttons won’t show up.

The vote can be about anything you want but the most creative issue and custom voting options sent out by the deadline will be rewarded by a chocolate prize. Winner’s choice of dark or milk chocolate. Ask Amy Abella, winner of the OCR Challenge prize if the chocolate is worth it!

You also have to vote in response to the emails with voting buttons you will receive from your fellow Branch Managers Challenge players.

Challenge #6 - Optical Character Recognition - Due August 28

or sometimes it is still easier to retype....

What is Optional Character Recognition or OCR software?

It is a program that translates printed or typed text to a wordprocessing file. Some advanced programs can translate handwritten records, too.

This is not a perfect technology. Even with a clean page printed with a standard modern computer font, OCR software can often mistranslate. This requires careful proofreading and editing in the resulting word processing document. Single page documents where formatting is critical like resumes can be very frustrating to OCR since OCR has great difficulty with formatting columns, bullets and other features common to resumes.

There are situations where converting a document back to a word processing file does make sense in time and effort. Knowing that OCR is possible and how to do the basic procedure can be a great advantage.

All PC Plus computers should have the OCR program TextBridge Pro installed. If you have access to another software package you want to use that's fine but the instructions below are TextBridge Pro specific.

Make sure your scanner is turned on and connected. Open TextBridge Pro. Don't open your usual program for scanning.

For the AutoOCR option in Textbridge, there are three basic steps with options for each. As a first try, keep the options at

1. Get Page: Scan B&W
2. Perform OCR, Describe Original: Automatic
3. Export Results, How? : Save as File

For this challenge, get your Branch Emergency Notebook, take out p. 40 Sample Letter To Parent Regarding a Discipline Problem and put it facedown in your scanner. Click on the blue Start triangle.

Be patient. This kind of scanning can take a minute. Soon you should see your first OCR Proofreader box. Sometimes a word the software suspects is wrong is perfectly okay, so you click the Ignore button.

Sometimes the software is a little or a lot wrong in figuring out a word. This can be from a stray mark on the page, a bit of fancy font or formatting or other things but it is fixable. Retype what you really want in the Change to: box, then click on Change. The Change box won't be clickable until you've made an edit in the Change To: box..

When you have finished with all the Proofreader boxes, click on Finish. You can now name and save the Word document. Unfortunately, you aren't finished. Sometimes OCR makes problems that aren't shown to you in a Proofreader box. Very carefully read and edit your new Word document when you open it inside of Microsoft Word.

In the example below, the software thought "OCL" was "OCT" and "Team, Jan. 2007" was "Teanz,Jan.,?007"

To complete the challenge, finish editing the letter in Microsoft Word as if you were really sending to a parent. Send the completed letter as an attachment to the Branch Managers Challenge Gmail account.

If you want to get creative and tailor the letter to the parents or guardians of a fictional character like Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan (discipline problems all) or any other character, I have a chocolate prize for the most creative submitted by the due date of August 28, 2009. Dark or Milk Chocolate, winner's choice!

Challenge #5 - Newspapers Online - part one - Due May 8

One of the things that aren't always available free through Google are stories from newspapers that are more than a few days or weeks old. OCL and the State Library pay for access for our customers to hundreds of newspapers. This month's challenge gets you started in the specialized searching of newspaper databases.

Start by watching the America’s Newspapers tutorial which is a Powerpoint slideshow.
You can simply go to the Internet address and watch but if you want to control the speed of the show or reverse or even go fast forward, the instructions below will help. Be patient while it loads.

http://images.newsbank.com/infoweb/agg/help/tutorialPubLib.pps

When prompted, click OK or Open.
Right click your mouse and click on Full Screen
Right click again to see other controls so you can work your way through the tutorial at your own speed.

The pause feature is useful since this slideshow goes a little fast. Right hand click again to end the show. If you can’t watch it in one sitting, note the slide number and you can start again from where you stopped.

When searching America’s Newspapers, try to think like a newspaper copyeditor or writer when you create your search strategy. The most important part of a good newspaper article has the the basic who, what, where and why of a story. This is the lead paragraph. The headline can be cute or provocative but won't be very useful in describing the content of the article. Searching full text can give you too many unrelated results. So selecting the Lead Paragraph option can often give you better results than either a broad keyword search or a headline search.

Some hints for this database:

Search for obits in both America’s Newspapers and American Obituaries. Some newspapers didn’t always split their data feeds properly and the obituary you want could be in either database.

Be skeptical when you don’t find something. Always try a few search methods.

When searching local stories from before the Asbury Park Press began to be indexed (1999), remember big stories could have also been covered in the NY Times or the Philadelphia papers. Find even a small mention of your story and it will give a starting point for a search in the APP microfilm. The Press of Atlantic City is indexed back to the late 80’s and often covered big Ocean County stories so don’t automatically eliminate that paper from your local story searches.

The obituaries in America’s Newspapers from the Asbury Park Press really start in February 2005 not January 1999 as listed in the database. From January 1999 to January 2005 less than 5% of the obits in the paper were added to the America’s Newspapers electronic file. It is very long story involving the wrong electronic feeds. So if you can’t find an obit in the APP from 1999 to January 2005, please send the request to Toms River so the microfilm can be checked.

Since the Toms River Observer went weekly many articles that appear in the paper don’t seem to be showing up in the database. It is another problem between the newspaper company and the database company.


1. Search an Ocean County town name. Either Toms River or Tuckerton works well in this example. Type it in the search box and click search. Take a look at the number of results, what papers they’re from and from what years. Now click on edit the search and change the dropdown menu to Lead Paragraph. Take a look at the results. Now try the search with Headline as the choice of type of search.

2. Search someone with local fame like James Mancini (remember to put the name in quotes so you don’t get false hits like an article about Edward Mancini and James Jones) in the entire country. Play with the limits on the left by Year, Location and Source and the different search options. Add the word Ocean to your search. What changed? Trying searching Elaine McConnell nationwide, then adding library or librarian or Ocean.

3. Play around with the features and do a few practice searches of your choice. I found the first mention of Sarah Palin in an Alaskan newspaper in 1991 when she came in 2nd in a 10K race. Try to think of real life questions where American’s Newspapers could give the answer.
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America’s Newspapers is not the only source of back issue stories from Newspapers. In the last challenge, you might have played with Google News Archive.

OCL also subscribes to Custom Newspapers which covers many newspapers that America’s Newspapers doesn't have especially international titles. There are also newspapers in some of the Ebsco databases.

How do you find what database has what newspaper or even what magazine or periodical?

OCL subscribes to a service called Ebsco A-Z that lets you know what database has what newspaper or magazine and even what subscriptions we get in paper and our microfilm holdings.

Where is Ebsco A-Z? Well, it isn't listed under that name since it was decided the customers won’t know what it meant. Just look for search box on the main Find-it page under "Are you looking for...."

Now if you search for the Star Ledger using this search box, you’ll see something like this:

Notice the Star Ledger is listed as being owned in paper and the customers are directed to our catalog with a link. The names of the two databases we own that include the Star Ledger are also linked.

4. Search for the Washington Post in Ebsco A-Z. Figure out which database will have coverage for January 1981. Click on it.

5. Find an article about the Reagan Inauguration in January 1981 and email it to the Challenge address. (Don’t forget the lead paragraph trick!)

6. Blog about searching for newspaper articles. A real life story of something you found interesting or found for a customer would be great.

Challenge #4 - Google and the first steps to becoming a Power User - due April 3

Like the GVRL challenge, this challenge is completely web-based, has several things to read and several small activities.

As librarians and as regular users of the Internet, we use Google routinely multiple times a day. Chances are that most of us are only using a part of what Google offers. Google is changing almost daily from adding small refinements to adding whole new services. One part of becoming a Google Power User is keeping up with Google. Another part of becoming a Google Power User is knowing where to go to find what is already available and how to use it.

For a quick introduction to Google’s extras, please read David Pogue's recent article from the NY Times: Geniuses at Play, on the Job

How many Google features, services or tips mentioned in the article were new to you?

To begin the challenge start by clicking About Google on the Google homepage.

Notice everything from the stories behind the Google Logos, to the Google Blog and a must for any aspiring Google Power User, Google Labs is linked here.

Google calls Google Labs its technology playground where they try out new ideas. Google Labs has just been reorganized in appearance in mid April. Be sure to read about all the projects still in the Labs (even on the 2nd page!) and check out the links for the Google Labs alumni on the left of the page.

The Google Blog is where announcements of new features, enhancements and even Google contests for children are made. People thought they found Atlantis in the new images of the Ocean floor posted in Google Earth. Did they? Read this post for the story.

Some examples of how knowing more about Google can help you:

A teenager walked in about 15 minutes before closing on a Saturday in full panic because they needed another source “not the Internet” for their report on a rather obscure NJ murder case from the very early 1900’s. I couldn’t find anything in our crime reference books and the student refused the NY Times coverage from the microfilm because “it has to be in a book.” I used Google Book Search and found a chapter on the murder in a book we own and that was checked in. I went to the shelf, confirmed the material was there and the student ran downstairs just in time to check in the book out.

A woman requested the full text of a poem called Caprice by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. A branch really worked hard on the question checking all of Lindbergh's books and many poetry anthologies but they couldn’t find a poem by that title. Using Google Book Search, I found several books that mentioned the poem as one she wrote while still in college. Finally, I found a book in Google Book Search that had the poem but because of copyright restrictions Google Book Search didn’t display the whole poem. Luckily, we owned the book. I was able to photocopy the complete poem and mail it to the customer. Notice in the image below that p. 124 is not available because of copyright. It had the beginning of the poem.

Books are available in Google Book Search fulltext, selections or snippet view (a few sentences before and after your search term) depending on the copyright restrictions. Use Google Book Search to get so much more out of your book collection than the subject headings in the catalog can possibly give.

Google News Archive Search

Go to Google News and look near the top right for the link to the archives search. This is a quick way of scanning the complete New York Times archives as well as a growing collection of material going back to the 19th century.

Google Advanced Searching

Limit your results to broad domains (site:edu, site:gov, site:org, site:mil, etc.) or to specific sites: site:oceancountygov.com OR site:app.com
Limiting by broad domains is great to get rid of commercial sites. Limiting to specific websites is very helpful when a site doesn’t have a search engine or the search engine isn’t very good.

Limit your results to specific file types
Need to create a powerpoint on a topic? See what others have done by limiting your results to Powerpoint presentations.
To find powerpoint presentations, add filetype:ppt to your searches
To find Adobe pdf documents, add filetype:pdf to your searches


That completes the background to get you started. Now the exercises to complete the challenge.

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1. Visit Google’s page on search features and try out at least one search in each of the seven categories :

Everyday Essentials

Local Search
Reference Tools

Query Refinements
Search by Number

Choosing Keywords
Trip Planning

2. Search a major disease like diabetes or arthritis or influenza in Google. Then add site:gov to the search. Compare results. Try adding site:edu instead of site:gov to get results from college and university sites instead of government sites.

3. The State of NJ’s website doesn’t have the greatest internal search engine. Use Google to search just within the NJ state site: site:nj.gov or site:state.nj.us will both work.

Try these sample searches:

underground railroad site:nj.gov

nj town names site:nj.gov

Compare results with using the search feature on the state website. Does Google with a site limit or the regular NJ state website search get you to better results? Did either find the 15 page pdf guide to NJ and the Underground Railroad or the great database for local NJ town names (Lacey & Forked River)?

4. Compare regular Google and Google Book Search for local history.

Search together: "point pleasant" o'neill

What differences do you notice in the material on Eugene O’Neill’s time in Point Pleasant with Google and Google Book Search?

5. Add an RSS feed to the Google blog on your challenge blog. This will make it easy to see new posts. Even if you have a regular RSS reader, add the feed to your blog so the Coordinator can see it. You don’t have to read every Google blog post completely or check for new posts everyday but for this month check it at least once a week for anything you might find interesting.

(If you don’t know how to make an RSS feed on your blog, here are some hints, Log in to your blog, look for Layout, then Add a Gadget, then Feed. To get the url for the feed look for the RSS logo in orange at the Google blog website. Right hand click on the logo, then click copyshort See if you can figure out the rest. For some basic info on RSS feeds, watch this Youtube video.

6. Blog twice this month: One post about a Google blog post you read and the other post about anything else you learned about Google in this Challenge through your reading or your practice searches. Stories where you used something you learned to help a customer or yourself or another employee are especially welcome.

Note: Because reading the Google Blog at least once a week is part of this challenge, no one will be marked completed until March 20. This gives everyone a chance to at least temporarily get in the habit of scanning the posts on the Google Blog regularly.

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Additional material for the true Google fans

10 top Google Hacks

Printable posters with Google search tips -great for teaching Google

Google Help Centers

Google cheatsheet

and finally and only to be used with those who ask you simple questions that Google can answer easily but they insist on asking you to find the answer anyway (never use this with customers and only with staff that have a sense of humor!)
Let me Google that for you You create a search on this site and it creates a short video showing the Google search and the phrase:” Was that so hard?” You then email the link to your friend or victim! Here’s a sample
I have a small chocolate prize for the funniest Let me Google that for you video sent me by March 20. I am the final judge of funny for this contest! Cheers!

Challenge #3 - Gale Virtual Reference Library - Due February 27

Did you notice that your branch of Ocean County Library had over $140,000 worth of reference books added to its collection in 2008 without needing a single inch of additional shelving? Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) is an online collection of digitized books organized as a database for convenient searching. They are the complete real reference books, available as PDF scans complete with page numbers. This is not a subscription, we actually own these titles. They won’t disappear. If a student says, “my teacher won’t let me use the Internet”, librarians can now respond, “It isn’t the Internet, its the library online.”

Because they are electronic, GVRL books are searchable by keyword. Articles can also be easily emailed and translated into several languages by clicking a button. A citation tool makes bibliographies in several formats much easier than ever before. Best of all, these books are available 24/7 at home or work to everyone with an Ocean County Library library card.

The complete list of titles is available two ways. In our staff and public catalogs, search “Gale Virtual Reference Library” as a SERIES. On the Find-it page (click Research & Info on the homepage, then click Research) “Gale Virtual Reference Library” is listed under many topics and in the alphabetical list of all databases. The first featured subcollection of GVRL books is listed as “Literature Resources for Students.”

Most of the reference books in this collection have traditionally been purchased only for the largest branches so many reference librarians in the small and medium branches haven’t had a chance to ever use them in paper. There are also many cases where the GVRL editions are newer than those owned by some branches.

Highlights of the more than 500 titles showing the range of subjects:

Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine , 3rd ed., 4v, 2009
Gale Encyclopedia of Surgery and Medical Tests , 2nd ed., 4v, 2009
Business Plans Handbook 14v
Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia , 2nd ed., 17v
Grzimek's Student Animal Life Resource , 21v
Scholarships, Fellowships and Loans , 25th ed., 2009
Bowling, Beatniks, and Bell-Bottoms: Pop Culture of 20th-Century America , 5v,
Colonial America Reference Library , 6v
Elizabethan World Reference Library , 4v
Great Depression and the New Deal Reference Library , 4v
Lucent Terrorism Library, 5v
National Survey of State Laws , 6th ed., 2008
Drama for Students, 25v.

Novels for Students, 28v.

Poetry for Students, 29v.
Encyclopaedia Judaica , 2nd ed., 22v, 2007
Encyclopedia of American Religions , 7th ed.,
Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World , 2v, 2004
Encyclopedia of Religion , 2nd ed., 15v, 2005,
Encyclopedia of Science and Religion , 2v
New Catholic Encyclopedia , 2nd ed., 15v
The Gale Encyclopedia of Science , 4th ed., 6v, 2008
Encyclopedia of Race and Racism , 3v, 2008
International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences , 9v, 2008

The goal of this challenge is to get you comfortable using GVRL and excited about what this collection can mean to your customers. So there are six small exercises drawing your attention to different features. It will make your challenge easier if you take a look at the following links first.

Basic Talking points on GVRL from the vendor (useful when making presentations to community groups): http://www.gale.cengage.com/gvrl/about.htm

GVRL search tips - recommended
http://www.gale.cengage.com/pdf/searchtip/gvrl_tip.pdf

Optional: Long (15 page) document on GVRL features and searching. If you want to be a GVRL power user this is for you.
http://www.gale.cengage.com/pdf/navguide/gvrl_nvg_v2.pdf
(I have chocolate for the first person who finds the embarrassing spelling typo in one of the search examples in the above document and emails the challenge Gmail account about what it is. No prize if you email the regular work email of the Coordinator.)

Exercises:

1. Search “Gale Virtual Reference Library” as a SERIES in both the staff catalog and the Public Catalog. Browse the list and select a record for an individual title. Notice you can click from within the record on the public catalog and go directly to GVRL. Notice the detailed contents notes especially for some of the literature resources like Novels for Students. They are searchable in general keyword searches inside our catalog.

2. Email the pdf of any article, which can be found through a basic search, advanced search or by searching within an individual book title by drilling down until you reach a specific entry. Email that pdf article to the challenge’s Gmail email. (Not to the regular Outlook of the Challenge’s coordinator, you’ll overload her email box!)

3. Find the source citation from the article/entry you emailed using the citation tool. Copy and paste that citation into a separate email, emailing it to the challenge Gmail account.

4. Translate an article to Spanish with the Translation tool. (These are machine translations but they help.)

5. A title that almost everyone (sorry, BH) now owns in paper and in GVRL is VideoHound's golden movie retriever (R 791.4375 Vide). Find your branch’s copy in paper, then search for a movie listing both in GVRL and in the paper copy.

Compare the PDF version in GVRL with the paper edition. If any student or parent questions whether GVRL material is really the same as the book, grab your Videohound and demonstrate!

6. Blog about using GVRL. If you can write a real life story of using it to help a customer, that would be wonderful.