Training/Outreach

BadgerLink provides free training and professional development to help you use BadgerLink resources. In 2017 we presented nine, 20-minute, webinars that we called BadgerLink Classes. You can find the recording of all of our past Classes on the BadgerLink Training page.

As we plan for our 2018, we need your help! The information you provide will help us plan interesting and helpful trainings. Please complete this 12-question survey by December 20, 2017.

 Take the survey

On Tuesday, November 28th the Technical Services Coordinator for BadgerLink, Elizabeth Neuman, presented on the statistics BadgerLink collects. Watch the recording to learn about what is tracked, what standards we follow, and what data is available for schools and libraries.

The recording for the session can be found on the Training page, our YouTube playlist, and here is the direct link to the recording. Additionally, here are the slides that were used for the presentation.

Want to read BookList, School Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews to find book reviews? BadgerLink is your cost-free solution to reading popular library publications to find book reviews or stay up-to-date on what's going on in the library world.

BadgerLink provides Wisconsin residents access to resources that normally schools or libraries would have to purchase. Academic Search Premier, one of BadgerLink's resources, provides the publications previously mentioned as well as many others!

To help you use Academic Search Premier, the BadgerLink team has put together a video that walks you through several methods for finding book reviews. You can find the video on the BadgerLink YouTube playlist or on the Training page. Here is a direct link to the Finding Book Review video.

If you have any questions, please Contact Us!

We are living in data driven times. Data is used for compliance purposes; to evaluate programs; for advocacy, marketing, or promotion; to inform research & policy; and for continuous improvement of operations.

On Tuesday, November 28th at 3 PM join Elizabeth Neuman, the Technical Services Coordinator for BadgerLink, for a 20 minute presentation on the statistics we collect. Learn about what is tracked, what standards we follow, and what data is available for schools and libraries. Leave with some ideas on how you can use BadgerLink usage data. This Class will be recorded and posted on the BadgerLink Training page.

Immediately following Class, we will hold Office Hours, an agenda-less online meeting where you can ask any and all BadgerLink questions. Join us for both, or drop in for one.

BadgerLink provides Wisconsin residents access to over a billion newspaper articles! Understandably we receive a lot of questions about newspapers. On October 31, BadgerLink hosted a class that covered how to search our top 3 newspaper resources: Access NewspaperARCHIVE, Archive of Wisconsin Newspapers, and Newspaper Source Plus. 

Did you miss the class? No worries. We recorded it and the recording is now available! Watch the video on YouTube or the BadgerLink website.  

Contact Us with any questions!

BadgerLink provides access to tons of resources! To help you navigate and use our resources we provide a collection of on-demand training materials, including videos, PDFs, tutorials, and websites. Check out the BadgerLink Training page for all of our materials.

Our monthly Classes are held the last Tuesday of the month at 3 PM. During each 20 minute class, we explore a BadgerLink resource or discuss a topic or question in-depth. Since we know that not everyone is available for our monthly Class, the sessions are recorded and posted on our training page. You can find a complete archive of all of our past Classes by going to the BadgerLink Training page and using the Training Type: Archived Class filter.

• September: Using Explora for research
• August: History Resources
• May: Wisconsin Media Lab
• April: Britannica's Spanish Resources
• March: Science Reference Center
• February: TeachingBooks.net
• January: Access and Authentication

In addition to BadgerLink Classes, our staff provide personalized in-person and distance training. Request Training (for your Wisconsin organization) for your next staff meeting or in-service day!

Did you know that Wisconsin residents have access to over a billion newspaper articles online through BadgerLink? Understandably we receive a lot of questions about newspapers. Which resource should I use to search for a newspaper? Do I have access to the Green Bay Gazette from 1872? How do I search for an obituary?

On October 31 from 3:00-3:20 PM, join the BadgerLink Training Librarian Kara Ripley for an online class, as she answers some of these common newspaper questions! We’ll take a look at our top 3 newspaper resources: Access NewspaperARCHIVE, Archive of Wisconsin Newspapers, and Newspaper Source Plus to learn about coverage and searching tips. Immediately following the newspaper Class, attend Office Hours, an agendaless meeting where you can ask the BadgerLink team any question.

The BadgerLink team released two new training videos, Locating Magazines & Searching for Articles Parts 1 & 2.

Learn the ins and outs of using our Popular Magazine title list, MasterFILE Premier, or advanced techniques when searching across multiple databases.

If you’ve ever been curious about using the licensed content from BadgerLink to find activities for kids in Highlights, brush up on financial literacy with Money, or stay healthy with Yoga Journal, view these short videos today!

Locating Magazines & Searching for Articles Part 1 and Locating Magazines & Searching for Articles Part 2 are available on the BadgerLink website or our YouTube playlist.

Contact us if you have any questions!

We've been sharing a series on how to use BadgerLink resources for research. Here are the previous posts:

• Part 1: What resource should I use?
• Part 2: How do I find a certain magazine?
• Part 3: Where's the full text?

Today we'll talk about what to do when you've started your research but can't find what you're looking for.

It happens to everyone, even librarians. Yes, we locate information for our living but we have all gotten stuck. When you're conducting research, you must be persistent. 

Our first tip is to make sure your searching the right resource! If you're looking for primary sources but you're searching a resource that doesn't have many, it's easy to think that there's nothing out there. There's stuff out there, just not where you're looking. From the BadgerLink Browse Resources page, click on Read More and check out the details of the resource you're using.

Screenshot of  
https://badgerlink.dpi.wi.gov/resources 

Another thing to do if you can't find what you're looking for is to not give up! For instance, if you're researching how tulips caused an economic crisis in the Netherlands in the 17th century (I'm not kidding. This is real.), you're going to have to search for a lot of different things to find the perfect article. Search different words and try different word combinations.

• Tulips
• Economic bubbles
• Tulip mania
• Tulipomania
• 17th century Netherlands
• 17th century Holland

Using the the above keywords, you will find plenty of articles on my research topic. But, what if after you make sure you're using the right resource and you try searching different words, you still don't find any articles? That's when BadgerLink gets really great! If you're using Google and you can't find what you're looking for, you're out of luck. But with BadgerLink, we have staff to help you locate information. All you need to do is Ask a Librarian! The BadgerLink team will get back to you and help you find what you need!

We've been sharing a series on how to use BadgerLink resources for research. Here are the previous posts:

• Part 1: What resource should I use?
• Part 2: How do I find a certain magazine?

In this week's article, we'll be covering how to know if the full text of an article is available.

Some resources, like Britannica School, will always be full text. But when you’re using an EBSCO resource, like MasterFILE Premier, you may run into a situation when you find an article but can only see the citation.

I did a search for homework in Explora for Middle & High Schools. The screenshot below shows the search results.

• The first result is the Topic Overview and this is generally an encyclopedia article that floats to the top of your search results to give you a broad overview of your search topic. The topic overview will always be a full text article. 
• Below the topic overview, are the other search results. Result 1 is an article that has full text, and you can tell because the PDF Full Text icon that I’ve circled. Result 2 is not full text and you can tell by the lack of an icon.

Click to enlarge.

Once you open an article, look to the upper left of the detailed record to see what your full text options are.

Click to enlarge.

If you only want to see full text articles, use the Limit To area on the left side of your search results and limit to Full Text.

Click to enlarge.

If you find a citation for an article and BadgerLink doesn’t have the full text, request an interlibrary loan for the article. Interlibrary loan is when your library borrows an item from another library and then lends it to you.

Part 4: I can't find anything!

Contact Us if you have any questions!