LIS520 Janes

Autumn 2011

Searching Assignment 3

Finding Web Resources

This assignment will give you experience in searching a variety of sources useful in finding Web resources.

For the following requests, you are to search in whatever Web sources you believe most appropriate or fruitful for the kind of response you would give to the person indicated. You may decide to search in more than one source or kind of source for each; you may decide a single search is enough. Always keep in mind that there might not be “an answer”.

You should submit, for each request you choose,

• a brief list of the sources you searched and the strategy/ies you used, explaining how you found any answers you identify
• the response you would make to the person answering the question. Each of these questions has come in via email or a Web form to the Internet Public Library reference service, so you should respond to them following their guidelines for format, writing style, resources, etc. The IPL guidelines (edited for our purposes) are here.
• any commentary you might wish to make about the question, your response, process, etc. (you needn’t have any, but if there’s anything you want me to know that you might not tell the questioner, go right ahead)

Here are the requests. Choose 5 requests, no more than 2 from questions 1-4; any more will not be counted. See instructions at the bottom of this page on how to organize your submission.

1 What percentage of toilet paper roll tubes are recycled?

2 Are there any maps of ancient Greece at the height of empire under Alexander the Great?

3 I am looking for a reading that I did when I was in school in the 1940's. I don't know what the title is or the author or if it would still be around, but I will give you the beginning lines:

"Whenever I go to (Sherburn) along the railroad track,

I go by a poor old farmhouse,

with it's shingles broken and black."

reason: I don't know how it will be used. It's more of a personal thing--I would like to give it to my granddaughter. I also work in an elementary school as the secretary and want to suggest it to one of the teachers.

4 Is Miss America 1937 still alive?

5 Does Moby Dick, the whale, die at the end of Melville's book?

6 What were the high temperatures in Rome, Italy for the week of July 11, 2011?

7 Can you find the name of what this woman is wearing on her head? I believe the photo is from the 1940s.

8 Is there any connection between the iSchool and the Academy Awards?

9 Who was the chair of the jury for the 1932 Olympic music competition?

10 Converted in value to today US dollar, what is today's equivalent value of one (1) French franc in the year 1830 ( or at least in the 1st-half of the nineteenth century ).

i.e., one French franc in 1830 would be worth what today?

reason: Confession time: From the novel I have read & reread countless times for over 40 years, I have endeavored through many different sources, all unsuccessfully, including many years ago the NY State Dept. of Education Library!) to find a source to tell me what the Count of Monte Cristo's fortune of 100 million francs remaining at the end of Dumas' novel would be worth today. Perhaps not the greatest historical novel ever written by many sources, I still however find it a wonderfully compelling story ( I am in fact re-reading it now and decided to try again ). Sorry to be so long-winded!!!

sources_consulted: Have tried, e.g., "historical currency equivalents" etc. but only find tables going back a few years, if anything at all.

11 Can you help me find technical reports, documents, whatever, about concerns about the levees in New Orleans before Katrina?

Your submissions will be evaluated on the decisions you make, the search strategies you use, the results you obtain, and the overall quality of your presentation.

You are to work on this assignment on your own (though see the statement on Academic Integrity in the syllabus on what that means).

Please:

· be sure that your submission has the last 4 digits of your student number and not your name in the upper right hand corner of the first page.

· label your responses to each question clearly, and organize them in numerical order by question number.

· start each new question on a new page.

The Assignment is due in class on December 9.