Thing 17....ELM

All hail the poor elm trees of America. The suburb of Chicago that I grew up in (Arlington Heights) had these up and down the streets all around town....until the late 90's when they started falling fast and furious to Dutch Elm Disease :( So sad. And the trend has risen in the loss of these gorgeous trees every year, so much so that you can't drive around the Cities without seeing the red rings of death on those that are to come down. So call me a Treehugger. I'm okay with that....I love nature, and one of the best things about living in the upper Midwest is the change of all four seasons. And there is no better guage of knowing the season than by trees (okay and yes, temperature :) Here's my plug for Arbor Day, which falls this month. Plant a tree, folks. Let's keep our cities green and beautiful!

Okay, Thing 17. ELM. (seeeee the correlation? slick, huh? ;) (btw, one friend, who i'm convinced is probably one of two people who actually reads this, who's not in library work asked "is that 23 Things really "due" by April 16? Yup. so now it's pressure time to get the last seven Things finished...)

ANYWAY. We have access to most of the ELM (...that stands for Electronic Library for Minnesota) databases through the Ramsey Cty Libraries. A few we don't. It's all about funding and what our system can afford, which sadly *isn't* the entire world. Here's a link to ELM if you're that curious... http://elm4you.org/

Those that we do provide access to are used often and for patrons of all types. Younger students (elementary-high school) and post secondary, graduate, PHD folks, the average Joe or Jane, you name it. They're pretty intuitive to use to the average patron who has searching experience on a computer. For those who haven't used PCs much, we offer classes for that. Okay, here's one disclaimer I feel I should make. For now, my career is centered 95% of my time in the children's room of the Roseville Library. This means I don't help patrons nearly as much with these databases and electronic resources as those that work the adult reference desk do. And many school districts in our area have access to ELM as well and students lucky enough to retain media/information tech specialists (aka librarians) hopefully know of these and use them. So once in a while I help educate the public about them, and access them in my work for a student's research needs. But most of the time I'm pointing out great books to teach kids how to read or learn how to use the potty. True story...

I've have played with some of the 23 Things Grand Marshal's ideas, and after spending the past few hours on this off and on, I declare this Thing completed. ~jd Bring on 18~