Inspire: Indiana’s Virtual Library Your Connection to Free Information Culver-Union Township Public Library

Did you know? You can use Inspire: Indiana’s Virtual Library for your information needs…FOR FREE!!! Just live (and presently be) in Indiana You can access Inspire from home or the Culver-Union Township Public Library This class will give you the basics needed to access information on many subjects.

How to access Inspire Go to and click the link at the bottom of the screen OR type

Once you are there- You can select certain places to search… Kids Search is Kid-Friendly Student Research Center for Teens Indiana Memory for digitized historical documents Indiana State Library- a link to IN library site Arbor Day Tree Identification Guide NetLibrary- free eBooks, journals, etc. Testing & Education Reference Center- practice tests for most standardized tests.

…Or the whole site- The Search Box is where it all Begins… Let’s try it Together Two different approaches… Simple- by default Advanced- by clicking the bar to the right… Since May is “Older Americans Month,” type “Older Americans” in the search box and click “Search.”

The results (a lot!) are clumped together by topic. We could look through them, but that would take forever. Let’s go back, narrow it down with an “advanced search.” The Search should give you a screen that looks like this

From the Inspire page, click “Advanced Search” First, the screen will look like this… Click “Advanced Search” Your screen should look like this: An “Advanced Search” is not harder, it allows you to narrow results to what you want to search. Let’s look at this screen more closely…

Advanced is Better! Enter “Older Americans” in the top box Enter “Arthritis” in the second box The “And” includes items about both “Older Americans” AND “Arthritis” You can change the box to be “Or” or “Not” which expands/narrows our search respectively. (See Cheat Sheet) For example, for articles about “Older Americans” excluding “Arthritis” we would use “Not” but for articles about “Older Americans” and articles about “Arthritis” together, we would use “Or” to get results from both. Either select “Search All” to get information from many sources…or you can narrow it down to specific places- just “Health & Medicine” for our purposes. Finally, Click “Search” to get your results… Narrow the Date to include items from 2000-Present

Now, for your results! The results are broken down by topic below. Click the heading “Chronic medical conditions” to browse the results. When you click, the topic expands to show its contents. Click the sub-section to see articles. There may be duplicate items.

Each heading gives you articles/items you can read Clicking the subheading expands the topic. They stay expanded for your exploration. When you click “Chronic Medical Conditions (11)” the topic is expanded to include three sub-topics. Click “Contribution of Chronic Conditions to Aggregate Changes... (2)” to get the two items. Scroll down, and both articles are available to view here and now. Click “View” or “View PDF” to see the article. Same goes for any of the other topics.

This is what you should get when you click “View” You can read, , listen to or print the article, translate it into other languages and even download an MP3!

Now, let’s give it a try Go to Inspire.in.gov Select a topic of interest to you Do an “Advanced Search” –be as specific as you can. Remember- If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. There is no “Perfect” search. Searching is exactly what the word says. Sometimes you will find a dead end, keep searching. FYI- Computer instruction at other libraries can come at a premium. Many libraries do not offer hands-on training. For example, Batesville Memorial Public Library ( ed2go.HTM) and the Indiana Cooperative Library Services Authority offers ed2go, but those classes cost library patrons, often quite a lot (about $99). ed2go.HTM