Reading Culture Survey

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At the start of the year, wanting to build our reading culture, a few teachers and I formed a reading culture committee. For our first action, we decided to survey the students about their reading. We would use their responses to determine our next steps. With the bribe of being entered into a raffle for homeroom cookies, over 70 of our 200+ middle schoolers responded, and here are their responses. For questions about “other” responses, if the responses were minimal or uninformative, I omitted the results here.

  1. Anything else you’d like to say about your reading?

• I love reading, and I read mostly young adult fiction, fantasy, or romance. I don’t read as much as I used to because of the amounts of homework.
• I love to read and it is fun to see all the different ways the author wrote the book.
• I love finding out the answers to the mysteries performed by the book and author!!!
• I love reading ([My friend] made me write this, but it is true)
• I like reading adventure books and mystery books.
• I read a lot and like reading! but sometimes other things get in the way.
• I love reading especially when I need a break so I might join the focus club.
• No but I want to know why we are doing this survey.
• I get thirty minutes of reading time, because I listen to audiobooks in the car. I get no actual reading time at home, because [of other obligations].
• I really like to read on my own, but when someone tells me to read, I feel like I don’t want to read anymore.
• I like reading, but do less if I have too much other work or activities.
• I like writing books.
• Nothing about reading, but I love cookies!
• I especially love historical-fiction/fiction.

Conclusions
We can see that for students who read, while regular print books are still the most popular reading material, they are also reading multiple other formats. I find that encouraging, and hope by listing all of those options as reading, students who might not have considered themselves readers will re-think that.

Many students do not read a whole lot each week. We found their reasons telling, as the top two were too much homework and too many other obligations. Based on this, we decided we needed to find them more time to read at school. We are planning a “drop everything and read” wellness event, in which they will all read in their homerooms for a block. In addition, students who choose not to join an affinity group will instead join a “drop everything and read” group during fortnightly affinity group meetings. We are also working on setting up an evening for student writers to read from their works, since so many are writers.

Building reading culture is certainly a marathon! It’s especially so when all of us are so busy that our reading culture group finds it hard to meet. However, we are moving forward bit by bit, and plan to keep at it. If you have some great ideas that have worked at your school, please add them in the comments!

Solutions Journalism: A Happy Habit, A Happy Use-case for Information Literacy

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Please see comments for a stream-of-consciousness update on how the lesson went and my faculty and students’ responses to Solutions Journalism. TBM 01/10/2025

Happy new year!

Fortunately, I am getting to start my new calendar year at school with Global Week, our ever-inspiring intersession. This year, our theme is “Bridging Divides: The Art of Listening, The Journey of Learning.” Overall, this topic means we are learning how to fight polarization.

To my great delight, I was asked to run a class on Solutions Journalism ahead of our final speaker, who works in that field. I’ve long been interested in this style of reporting, and was delighted to have a reason to learn more about the concept. As the child of an old-school journalist, it is exciting to see a movement trying to shift away from “if it bleeds, it leads” (the historical version of clickbait, one might argue) and instead look at news focused on positivity and hope.

It is fascinating to dig into what that premise looks like in practice. A far cry from human interest and hero-worship, I am finding Solutions Journalism to be an approach that allows room and provides methods for difficult discussions, while drawing on the evidence-based standards that I value from growing up discussing my father’s work.

As articulated by the Solutions Journalism Network, the four principles of the approach are:
“1 Response: Focuses on a response to a social problem — and on how that response has worked, or why it hasn’t;
“2 Insight: Shows what can be learned from a response and why it matters to a newsroom’s audience;
“3 Evidence: Provides data or qualitative results that indicate effectiveness (or a lack thereof); and
“4 Limitations: Places responses in context; doesn’t shy away from revealing shortcomings.”

What I like about this framing is that it leaves room for hope. Even when programs go wrong (which the method encourages journalists to write about), the goal is not to assess and place blame, but to analyze what we have learned so we can do better next time.

Even more consistently, the method gets away from all the messiness of the (broadly misunderstood) notion of “objectivity” of media, which carries not only a history of enabling limited perspectives in storytelling that glossed over social ills (like racism) but which also somehow got us to this idea that we have to pick two sides (no more, no fewer) and give them equal weight. It does not call for pro-and-con retellings, but asks journalists to look at a tried solution to a problem and see strengths, admit weaknesses, and embrace nuance.

The mindset is, in and of itself, about bridging divides. The foundational attention to complicating narratives rests, in part, on the notion that accepting common pro/con narratives on a topic are standing in the way of our gaining real understanding of what is going right or wrong. There is a sense of transcending political boundaries to ask larger — perhaps even more real? — questions and get at what can actually be done to improve a situation.

As a research skills educator, I find the ways evidence is defined and used in this type of reporting to be deeply meaningful. The standard is whether evidence helps the reader understand why something happened the way it did, rather than simply, “here is someone saying something angry/happy/tearful about our topic.”

As an educator of growing humans, I am profoundly grateful that there is a way my students can engage with societal problems that focuses hard on the potential for a better world.

If you want to check out some articles, the Solutions Journalism Network has a number of ways for you to approach finding examples, from their annual round-ups of favorite articles, to their international database of examples (warning: short reads are not the same as quality reads in this method), to their collections of examples such as heroes not hero worship and constructively reporting on failures.

OK, so, um. The whole idea of this form of journalism is to write about tried solutions, not ideas. I have read about the method, but am only using it with students for the first time today. If you have worked with Solutions Journalism in your school, would you let me know in the comments or by email?

May this new year bring many positive solutions into your world.

Escape Rooms

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When I first heard about escape rooms several years ago, I thought they sounded like an amazing activity the kids would love, but I doubted my ability to put one together. Then a teacher approached me with the hope of running a Harry Potter escape room, so I started doing some research. After finding a librarian who had created such a room, Beth Bouwman of the Somerset County Library System in NJ, I got her permission to duplicate her escape room. She sent me all of the details, the teacher purchased props and locks, and everything went well. During the pandemic, I adapted that escape room into an online version. Instead of the usual Google Forms style, I used a Google Slide with added, clickable images, so it wasn’t a linear experience.

Later, I borrowed several escape room plans from Erica Testani, a Virginia librarian: Babysitters’ Club, Wings of Fire, Percy Jackson, and Taylor Swift. At that point, I had facilitated enough escape rooms to attempt creating one of my own. I started with another Percy Jackson one, and just finished a Keeper of the Lost Cities one. While the rooms take a lot of prep, set up and break down time, the kids love them and I enjoy the creativity of putting them together.

Want to create a room of your own? Here are some hopefully useful tips.

Plot

Start with your theme, perhaps a popular book series to connect with the library, or some other aspect of popular culture. Then you need a starting point. What are the kids trying to find, or do? Did Percy lose Annabeth’s baseball cap? Do you need to complete a Taylor Swift Lover House with icons from all of her eras? Did Kristy’s little sister go missing and you have to find her? It doesn’t have to be a weighty goal! The premise should include the first clue. I generally do a linear escape room, in that the boxes must be opened in a certain order, so the starting clue is key.

Boxes

My escape rooms are more like solving a series of boxes with different types of lock. I generally go with five or six boxes. If you have a kit from Breakout.edu, you probably have some boxes already, but I’ve also repurposed sturdy gift boxes and plastic containers, using a drill to make holes for the locks.

Locks

You’ll want a variety of locks. If you have a Breakout.edu kit, you’ll likely have a multilock, which is really useful because you can change out the wheels and use it as a word lock, color lock, or directonal lock. I also have additional word locks, number locks (three and four digit), and key locks. VERY IMPORTANT: Because you can change the combinations of your locks, be SURE to label each lock with its current combination before putting it away after your escape room event is over!

Puzzles

Here’s where you can go crazy! Codes, ciphers, runes, jigsaws, maps, clues in blacklight (you need the pen and the blacklight), auditory clues that must be replicated, riddle-poems, baking soda snowballs to be melted with vinegar, Jeffersonian wheel ciphers, red-film clues, edible clues, liquid clues, color clues, pretty much anything you can think of. Tactile clues are great; our kids spend so much time on screens that things they can touch and manipulate are welcome.

Décor

This will obviously vary with your theme, but doesn’t need to be elaborate. Posters, books, props, some red herrings. Consult with students if you’re less familiar with the material, and source items with the help of other teachers. Our theater’s costume closet has supplied a lot of décor for me, as has one of the Latin teachers (a Roman helmet for Percy Jackson). A science teacher helped me by three-D printing a lightning-bolt cookie cutter. Other teachers have responded to my queries for things like a kid’s xylophone and a “thinking cap.” All of the teachers were happy to be asked and enjoyed the opportunity to participate.

Scheduling

One of the drawbacks of doing an escape room is that it doesn’t work well for more than a few kids at a time. My ideal group size is five, maybe six, so everyone gets a chance to participate. When we had a scheduling glitch and I ended up with too many kids, I divided them into two groups and they alternated solving the clues. Because I have small groups, I need to run several sessions of each escape room, and multiple setting up/breaking down times does add more time overall. Plus, to ensure that the kids solve the room in the space of the lunch block, I usually have to give them a lot of hints.

Sharing

I am happy to share any of my escape room setups, and Erica gave me permission to share hers as well (with credit). If you’d like to run any of these, or you have additional questions about setting up this type of escape room, feel free to contact me. If you have one you’d like to share, please also contact me—I’m always looking for new ideas!

Mid-Year Check In

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Back in August, I shared my 3 big goals for the year – weeding, dynamic shelving, and signage. Now that we’ve reached the end of semester, I thought I might share my progress on these goals.

Goal 1: Weeding

As of Tuesday, the weeding is finished! I worked my way through all of our fiction genres one by one and started with the criteria that it had to have been purchased more than 8 years ago (just before I started at Webb – not sure I’m emotionally ready to omit fault in my own purchases yet) and that it hadn’t been checked out since the library moved to the upper school building 5 years ago. I pulled a lot of series this go-round that I had tried to keep together during past weeds – I kept the first 3 of Wheel of Time but gave away the other dozen of the series, and all of the Princess Diaries got the boot since the first one went missing last year. There were also a few that I kept after all because I think they’ll get some traction once they’re front facing. I’ll admit, this step would have gone quicker if I’d had more access to boxes and more places to store them (I lost my work room in the move), but I think a semester is pretty good timing as a solo librarian. Most of the books were shipped to ThriftBooks a few days ago, where they will handle the selling and share the profits with us. The others are going to our local Friends of the Library, and those few boxes are the only thing standing between me and totally clear shelves.

Goal 2: Dynamic Shelving

This goal was almost entirely dependent on the weeding happening first to make room for more front-facing displays. I started by moving our year-round state book award display to a free standing shelf, which gave me an entire stack of extra shelves to work with. So far, I’ve shifted and re-organized Adventure, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, and Humor, and all the extra space from that former display has now been used up. The dynamic shelving worked really well in Fantasy because there were tons of series to stack together. I even felt like I made even more extra space in Fantasy! But in Historical Fiction, where there are very few series, all of the extra space was eaten up really quickly. Humor ended exactly where it had before, which isn’t going to give me much room when I get to our larges genre, Realistic Fiction. I might have to go back and rework some of these first sections later.

I also realized very quickly that I didn’t have enough book ends to make books front-facing, which is what Kelsey Bogan recommends in her blog series about how to do dynamic shelving. I ordered more from Demco – these are the ones I like – and have already used up all the new ones too. I think I need to find a cheaper option for this project, because I actually like the way they work better than a traditional book display stand. They keep the book much more upright than a display stand, which seems to put less stress on the spine, especially for hefty tomes like the Harry Potters and Game of Thrones.

The shelves are very busy, but students do seem to be more engaged with what’s on the shelves. I love that series are very clearly together. I think this might even help to speed up shelving, or at least help students make fewer mistakes when replacing books they decided not to check out after all. I haven’t had any true feedback from anyone yet, but I’m inviting teachers for a drop in “grab a book and coffee” on the half day before break starts (thanks for idea Lee De Groft!), and I’m interested to see what they say.

Goal 3: Signage

And this is where the progress ends, because I haven’t thought any more about signage since I wrote that blog post. It’s still on my list, but it will have to entirely happen next semester. If you love your signage, especially for nonfiction, I’d love to see it!

So that’s where I’m at midway through the year – 1.5 out of 3 – but that’s why we make annual goals, right? How are you doing on your goals this year? Anything AISL can help you with?

Oh and remember that evil printer I mentioned in August? It’s still up to it’s hi-jinks and hasn’t worked 2 consecutive days yet this year. Would I be farther along in my goals if it worked reliably? I fear we shall never know…

The Joy of Museum Exhibition Design

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Well, we are deep in History Final Projects season once again! I have an in-box full of research assistance requests, so I am going to share the joyous discovery I made through a new collaboration this year.

One of our History teachers moved to 9th grade, taking lead on curriculum — basically a completely new one — for that class. About half of this term has focused on ethnic studies, mostly using historical thinking skills to weigh multiple perspectives, and doing close reading of primary source material. The teacher came to me with the idea of having students make a museum exhibits, feeling there was something about the storytelling — the human experience — that she wanted students to strive to capture with their final project. Their topic is a social movement from an ethnic group living in California in the 20th Century or earlier.

Of course, that gave me a perfect rabbit-hole to go down! The available materials on exhibition design are wonderful, and I quickly discovered that it offered a fantastic framework that allows the development and demonstration of many historical thinking skills. Not only does it allow students to chose a voice for their writing, but the strictures and low word counts push back against writing in curlycues to try to “sound smart” that so often plague our 9th graders.

Some of the excellent sources I drew upon for lesson planning purposes included guides from the Smithsonian and the BC Museums Association. (NOTE: Debbie Abilock just pointed me to the classic work that almost every guide I read talked about, but the Internet Archive was down when I was designing the project.) Students will be making a digital exhibit with Thinglink. (Here is my very in-process example.) I’ll be vulnerable and tell you that I am due in class now, even though I have citations missing from pretty much everything at this point. The links here should point you to most of what I used to build the curriculum, if not the exhibit.

In any event, here is our first draft of class materials. I’m very, very open, as always, to ideas and feedback. (Please NOTE: We decided we absolutely want to keep this project in the curriculum, and we would definitely take more days to do it next year.)

I’m off to support storytelling about the Chicano Tattoo Movement, gospel music in Los Angeles, and more!

It’s time for Library Olympics!

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Greetings, all, and happy almost-end of the year. Winding down these final weeks, the students’ and teachers’ brains are all but toast, so for our final visits with grades 3-6 we host our annual Library Olympics: a series of games reviewing skills and concepts covered throughout the semester (we do one before Winter Break and one before Summer Break). Below are a few of the events we play, remixed and revamped every year. Enjoy!

Mini-Shelves

We play this game to review organizational strategies. 7-8 books are set up at each table, and students simply rearrange the books in call# order. (Fun fact: there is ALWAYS one team who arranges the books in reverse order.)

Catalog Relay

So that I don’t have 24 9-year olds storming the stacks, this is a true relay: a small stack of cards are placed on each table, with either a title, author, or subject for each student to search in the catalog. One student from each table scoots to the shelf and brings back their book, and then tags a fellow table-mate who then retrieves their book, and so on until either time or cards run out. We play this game to review organizational strategies and location & access.

Codebreaker Word Scramble

This game involves a bit of prep on my part, but it sure is fun (and it usually takes me longer to explain than it does for the kiddos to actually play). This game reviews text features, and if we have time, students must find the correct book on the shelf first (location & access). Each book has a corresponding worksheet, and students must use the table of contents, glossary, and/or index to find the correct words. One letter from each word corresponds to a blank on the whiteboard (prepped before-hand), and once every team has filled in their letters, the whole message unfolds.

Kahoot!

No Library Olympics would be complete without a Kahoot! game. Depending on the grade level and concepts covered, these questions can range from simple catalog screenshots (“Is this book available?”) to fill-in-the-blank questions (“A digital subscription source with articles edited by experts is a ____”). Madness ensues. It is spectacular.

What about you? What games / activities do you use to review concepts with your students? Thanks for reading!

On Collaboration and Success….

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I love my job.  I began my career as a university librarian and soon realized that the part of my job I liked best were the student and faculty interactions, but I was not able to spend as much time as I wanted in those areas.  I became a school librarian almost by accident and can honestly say that it was the best move that I could have made. The connections that I make with colleagues and students genuinely bring me joy.  After a tough couple of years (professionally), I am thrilled to have this feeling again in my work life.

As I shifted to serving in the middle school building full time, collaboration with faculty was a primary focus.  After several years of me only being a part-time presence in the building, the faculty was not used to having a librarian available daily.  Last year was a building year that is paying off in 2024-25.  During the first quarter, I collaborated with 7 teachers and taught a total of 60 class sessions. In addition to a few one-day introductory classes, I spent multiple days with sixth grade English and Science classes laying a foundation for larger projects in future months.  One major success is working with a social studies teacher who has been convinced that they did not need any assistance from the library regarding resources or information literacy skills. For the first time in my 8 years working with middle school staff, I finally scheduled a one-day collaboration with this teacher – and it was a success!

I also count my connections with students as a success.  During my time in the middle school, three of my children have been students in the building and I do my best to be sensitive to the potential embarrassment of having your mom as one of your teachers. As a member of GenX, I find myself moving into the “get off my lawn” phase of life and am trying not to become too curmudgeonly.  In one of my recent English lessons, I jokingly used GenZ slang to open the lesson – to the slight embarrassment of my current 7th grader. The students called me on the cringe factor of using their language, but also valiantly attempted to teach me the correct syntax and phrasing.  As I walked through the hallway later in the day, I overhead a couple of students say that I was the G.O.A.T and that they couldn’t wait to see what I do in my next lesson. During lunch duty yesterday I was informed that my “drip is slaying today!”, which I understand to be a compliment.  😉

As I continue to build the library program at the middle school level, it is easy to focus on the disappointments or the times that administration does not understand my duties.  Refocusing my attention on the connections that I am building with staff and students reminds me of the reasons I chose this career. I remain thankful for all of these connections built through learning.

Indexing Knowledge

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Up until recently, I was fine with acknowledging that while our students don’t know how to use a print encyclopedia (it’s just sad to watch, really), that searching in our online reference is what they will use mostly now and in the future and that keyword searching is fine for that.

Then while doing an activity with some of my 9th grade history classes that asked them to look in a print encyclopedia I realized that the added research value of a good index is something that is missing from the digital reference we have. For example, if you look for maroons in our Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, the index provides not only the page numbers for for several entries, but also the cross-reference cimarrónes, and the “see also” terms: Palenque, Quilombo, and Miskitos. For the thorough researcher who ventures to those terms in the index as well, they will find valuable information. Under the Miskitos heading is a subheading for “enslavement of African fugitives” that isn’t otherwise referenced in the “maroons” entries, and quilombo leads to subheadings for the specific community of Palmares. 

For digital subject encyclopedias in history, we use InfoBase’s History Research Center. Taking my search online, “maroons” yielded 69 results that are encyclopedia entries, with the leading entries being “maroons,” Maroon’s rebellion,” “Maroons in America,” and “Brazilian maroons,” before continuing on with headings that don’t contain the word maroon. None of the 69 results includes the entries for “quilombo,” or “Palmares,” which the print  index pointed us to, despite HRC containing articles for both. Throughout this process, there are no suggested terms provided the way you would find indexed terms that cross-reference and nest within larger headings. Reading through the individual articles, you will come across those terms, but they are not flagged, linked, or indicated in association. What HRC does provide is a box with unstructured tag clouds for each entry, and it is unclear how they are determined. 

As a side-note, I tried asking ChatGPT for help with the prompt: I’m interested in researching maroons and maroon communities. What are some other terms I should use for searching, beyond “maroon?” ChatGPT provided 20(!) additional terms to search, some of which would be too broad on their own to get me good results (“Creole societies,” “African diaspora,” “guerrilla warfare,” “underground resistance,” and “ethnogenesis”) and some that mirrored the cross-references and subheadings from the print encyclopedia index (“Cimmarones,” and “palenques.”) However, Quilombo, Palmares, and Miskitos did not appear. 

Reference sources, to me, require the ability to utilize an index, but indexes are incredibly helpful in other works as well. While Command F and other “search within” search features will find words in your text, these searches can lead to at least 3 less-than-desirable outcomes:
*An over-abundance of results if the term is ubiquitous to your topic,
*A dearth of results because you have the wrong term,
*An incomprehensive set of results because there are places where your topic is discussed but without using the search term. 
A good index ameliorates these issues by directing you to the topic where it is discussed in the text regardless of the terms used in that part of the text, as well as providing alternate terms, and where the topic requires nuance, with more specific sub-headings.

To pull back out of the weeds here, a good index provides advantages to a researcher that are distinct from full-text searching. And yet, my 9th graders came in with no idea what an index is, much less how to navigate and leverage them. Convincing them of the nuanced advantages of an index when they are so accustomed to full-text searching may be a challenge. Particularly as I myself was ready to capitulate to the ease of digital reference sources (which I still prefer for their currency in many cases). 

My take-away isn’t necessarily that I need to keep print reference works just so students can practice researching with an index. Rather, now that I’m aware of the skill gap and reminded of the important role a good index can play in effective research, I can target my instruction to specifically teach students how to use an index and why they will want that skill. I’ll also bear in mind this gap when working with students on identifying keywords recognizing they may need to work harder at that without the useful suggestions of an index at their pre-research stage. Beyond the instructional elements, I’ve also realized an important piece to look for and advocate for in our digital reference sources so we don’t lose something useful in the translation from print to digital.

Citation Puzzles

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One of my orientation sessions with our 5th graders covers citations. To start, we talk about what citations are, why it’s important to cite your sources, and what sort of information citations include. While I mention that formatting is important, I tell them we won’t worry about that today since our NoodleTools software formats for us. Instead, we focus on finding the elements of citations for different types of sources, because different sources need different types of information. I want them to come away from the lesson knowing that: 1. You cite your sources to give credit to the creator, and so other people can find your sources; 2. Different types of sources require different types of information in citations.

I love to gamify my lessons, so I start by dividing the class into two teams. They then compete to assemble a twelve-piece puzzle featuring a blank country map, and correctly identify the country. I created the puzzles by printing out country maps blank except for capital cities. Then, I colored in the selected country to distinguish them from the surrounding countries, laminated them, and cut them into twelve symmetrical pieces. I’m sure there’s a more impressive, less craft-y way to do it, but my handmade puzzles work pretty well!

To earn puzzle pieces, each team must fill in twelve forms, guiding them to twelve different sources. They may work together, or individually. The source is listed at the top of the form (which, to exactly no-one’s surprise, they rarely read), and I provide blanks for the specific information needed for that source. After years of struggling with computers that wanted to update right in the middle of a lesson, wouldn’t log on, lost database access, etc., I threw my hands up and now use only printouts and print books.

I post or set the materials around the classroom, grouped by type: print books, website pages, eBook pages, database article pages, and online encyclopedia pages. On the printouts, I highlight the labels for information the students need, though they still struggle with it. Especially in the last couple of years, I found that students can’t identify a magazine or newspaper title on the database article printouts, even highlighted—I need to clarify that “source” = magazine/newspaper title for my chosen articles.

Once the students have completed a form, they bring it to me to check. If they have completed it well, I give them a puzzle piece for their team. If they have missing or incorrect information, I send them back to find it. They are welcome to help others on their team. Once they have completed the forms, they work on completing the puzzle, and looking up the capital city to identify the country. I always hand out the piece with the capital on it last!

This lesson has held up pretty well, though I do find myself making it easier/more obvious each year, mostly to streamline the game to ensure we finish on time. I did notice that this year, the students struggled more with the puzzle than in years past, and I noticed that they also struggled in a session that involved filling out a blank library map. I wonder, is students’ overall spatial awareness is declining? In any case, I don’t expect them to remember details from this lesson. If they come away knowing what a citation is, that they need to cite their sources, and that different sources require different information in citations, then they have completed their first step on the citation road. How has your teaching of citations changed in the last few years? Please write it in the comments!

Do you have that pink book about Rosa Parks? On “impossible” questions becoming “possible”

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I was fully looking for something cheerful to post about today, and it turns out that “cheerful” in this instance means finding a use for something about which I have historically felt little enthusiasm: the new-ish top “result” in Google search.

When I worked at Google, one of the realizations I had revolved around questions that we librarians had a tendency to (among ourselves) view as “stupid.” First among those was asking for a book by the color of its cover. Essentially, we felt it was an unreasonable question, because it was one we could not answer. (Also because people remember green books as red and yellow books as blue, but I don’t yet have a solution for that problem.) Sometimes, technology allows us to solve a problem, as I discovered when I went to try to understand of what use color filtering in image searching could really be:



Well, this morning I was grappling with a question and I decided to try using Google AI to answer it, and look what happened:


Asking Google’s AI to tell me in which databases to find The Atlantic and JAMA in full-text

Are these responses complete? Completely correct? Did I burst into flame from typing a long-form question into a search box? The answer to each of these questions may well be “no.”

Nonetheless, I think about all the times that I wished I knew which databases to search to find x source, and I was pleasantly surprised to have this tool to try and help me.

So – hope this brings some joy or at least ease to your week. Take care, and search on!