November is National Diabetes Month

SuDocQueen@evpl — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:07:00 GMT

Considering the prevalance of diabetes in America today, I suspect the disease has touched many, many families in the Evansville and tri-state area. It is certainly a topic near and dear to my heart since I have had family members and friends afflicted with both Type 1 and Type II. For those who have never encountered diabetes, or those newly diagnosed, it can be a frightening disease. So what better time to learn more about the disease than during the month dedicated to it?

To be honest, it had slipped my mind that November was National Diabetes Month until I got an email update from www.usa.gov talking about it -- check out www.usa.gov's website to find out about all the great email updates and RSS feeds people can sign-up for. The email included a great link to their FAQ section on diabetes. That section in turn offers several ways to get information on diabetes. They include phone, address, and email for the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse as well as several links for different websites like National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse, National Diabetes Education Program, and the American Diabetes Association.

You can find even more online information from www.usa.gov by browsing or keyword searching from the website's main page. To browse, scroll down the main page until you see "Health and Nutrition." Clicking will take you to a further breakdown of the subject. Scroll down to "Health Topics A-Z" and click. Then click on "D" and scroll down until you get to "Diabetes." You'll see about twelve different topics on diabetes from diabetes and pregnancy to diabetic diet, kidney problems or even nerve problems. Each topic leads to great information from Medline Plus that includes additional links on things like prevention, related issues, and research as well as links to videos, tutorials, and pictures where available.

You can also do a keyword search on diabetes by typing the term into the search box at the top of www.usa.gov's main screen. You'll get a results page reminiscent of Google but without all the extraneous hits from questionable websites. The neatest part of the results page is the topic breakdown on the left-hand side of the page. The topic list is a breakdown of the search results into individual topics. The numbers in parenthesis indicate how many hits your search had under that topic, and the plus button to the right indicates that the topic can be broken down even farther. Clicking on the plus button will show that further breakdown while clicking on the topic itself will change the results list to the hits for just that topic. Also, take a look at the Agencies breakdown. If you didn't know, www.usa.gov searches state as well as federal websites. Looking at "Agencies" will give you a concise picture of the places your results are coming from. For example my "diabetes" search showed that the majority of my results came from the National Institutes of Health, but if you click to see "All" results for Agencies, you can scroll down and discover that Indiana has a page on diabetes coming from the IHS Division of Diabetes Treatment and Prevention.

If you're not on information overload yet, or if you prefer your information in a more tangible format, EVPL has an amazing collection of print material on diabetes ranging from books on the disease, complications, and diet to cookbooks for the diabetic. My simple keyword search using the term diabetes then limiting to books turned up over 400 books. Or, if you'd like to see magazine articles you can go back to the computer, go to our databases, and select a general database like Masterfile Premier, (see it under our list of "Popular Databases" or find it through our "Alphabetical Sequence") and do a keyword search for articles on diabetes. You can also choose "Category Sequence" and click on Health and Medicine to see a list of databases that will narrow your search to just medical journals.

Vacation on a budget...

SuDocQueen@evpl — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:38:00 GMT

Nowadays everyone’s talking about staycations. This reminded me of the wonderful vacations my parents took me on even when we had to watch every penny. How’d we do it? By visiting our National Parks and State Parks (and camping, but that’s a whole ‘nother story). Most parks have entrance fees for an entire passenger car that are cheaper than an individual ticket to Disney World.

Starting in the winter my parents would send away for scads of pamphlets and maps of parks like the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, and Slide Rock State Park. Planning early is still a good idea but now it’s even easier. All you have to do is go to www.nps.gov. From there you can learn about every national park in the country. They have a great search tool on that front page. Just click on the state you’re interested in visiting and you’ll get a list of all the parks in that state. But what if you know the name of a park but not what state it’s in? No problem. Click on the “Advanced SearchTool and Map.” From there scroll below the map and you’ll see a great browser tool that will let you pick your park by name, location, preferred activity, or even topic (like mountains or volcanoes or coral reefs).

But what about state parks? Well, if there’s a site out there that pulls all state parks under one “roof” I haven’t found it yet, but putting “state parks (insert the state name of your choice)” into Google does a terrific job of pulling up each state’s website.

And, if you’re at Central Library stop by and take a look at some of the books and pamphlets the National Parks Service still puts out. We have a whole series of pamphlets on the Blue Ridge Parkway trails. Just ask one of us about Call # I 29.149. Or if you’re interested in the historic details of sites, you might want to take a look in our I 29.88 area. Those are historic structure and site reports on places like Fire Island Lighthouse, the Eleanor Roosevelt Historic Site, and Antietam National Battlefield.

Research Blog : evpl, Online resources

November is National Diabetes Month

Vacation on a budget...