[nabs-l] academic library access

Sat Jan 9 23:46:27 UTC 2016

Hello Kennedy,

Glad you shared your thoughts. I guess we just have to do what we can do and 
get help with human readers.
Readers are great when they work well and are dependable, but I've had many 
unreliable readers.
I am glad someone gets the frustration with ebsco databases. They are 
terrible. What I learned from a good librarian though Ii s something that 
saves me so much time. Before, I did the same search in several ebsco 
databases. This librarian showed me how to search all ebsco databases at 
once, or you can pick which databases you desire to search by checking the 
boxes. So, once you pick the databases you want, you press a button and it 
sets it to that search. Then I limit it to certain types of articles so I do 
not get hundreds of book reviews. It works great, and I wish I had known 
that before.
I suggest that if you need many ebsco databases that you have a librarian 
show you this trick. Press B to get to the buttons.

My experience is also that some librarians are great, and some are not. 
Yeah, a mixed bag of good and bvad ones.
It takes more skills and patience to describe what they are doing, and some 
do not have it. They typically show students what they are doing on the 
screen, and since I cannot see the screen, they have to verbalize it.

I was researching Queen victoria, and needed biographical info not online 
through databases. So, I used readers.
I got an extension on the project as I needed more time as my readers took 
longer to find the info and they cancelled sometimes on me.

Well, we pretty have much the same experiences. Man, if I ever have free 
time and find an ebsco contact for accessibility, I'll write to them.

Ashley

-----Original Message----- 
From: STOMBERG, KENNEDY via nabs-l
Sent: Saturday, January 09, 2016 5:28 PM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Cc: STOMBERG, KENNEDY
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] academic library access

Ashley,

It honestly depends on the type of research you are doing. You are so right
about the Ebsco databases, though. They are a nightmare!

If you're looking for scinitific journal articles, I find that Google
Scholar is very
accessable. Bookshare or Learning Allz might also be an option, if
they have the books you need.

I have had both good and bad experiences with librarians. And I deffinitely
agree that it's frustrating to still need readers in this day and age! It's
kind of redicubous!

Good luck with your classes this semester!
Kennedy Stomberg

On Sat, Jan 9, 2016 at 3:47 PM, Vejas Vasiliauskas via nabs-l <
nabs-l at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Hi,
> If you have a Bookshare account, you could try looking for the book
> there.  If you're working on a research paper of some kind, Bookshare
> usually has some good books on the topic you're researching.
> I never used the databases in high school; do you find using them helpful?
> Vejas
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Ashley Bramlett via nabs-l <nabs-l at nfbnet.org
> To: "National Association of Blind Students mailing list" <
> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
> Date sent: Sat, 9 Jan 2016 16:22:05 -0500
> Subject: [nabs-l] academic library access
>
> Hi all,
>
> I’d like to hear about the level of support and accessibility of your
> library and the resources it has.
> I’ve written about my struggles before.  The gist is that many library
> databases have access issues.  The ebsco ones are the worst.  Its hard to
> open the pull down list of options, but I think I finally did open them
> with spacebar.  I find that databases run through Oxford and proquest are
> generally user friendly and accessible.  Jstor is fairly decent, but seems
> like most articles are image pdfs or display on the screen as images.  I
> kept wondering why jaws was saying graphic and the next line said page 1 
> of
> 5 or however many pages it was; then it occurred to me that the text must
> be an image; so I found the pdf link to download it.
> The pdf was an image too, so I had to convert it.
>
> Generally, when I was in the university setting, I got support from the
> reference desk.  They retrieved books for me and other students had to 
> find
> them by call number.  I got pretty much the same support as other
> students.  I was on my own with access barriers.  Sometimes, I was able to
> get a library assistant to sit down with me and look at the database and
> then email me relevant articles.  This worked much faster than jaws.
>
> Now, to learn more, I’m taking classes at Northern virginia community
> college, nova, while looking for work.
>
> Many Nova reference staff are great and in fact go the extra mile.  They
> explain well how to search databases.  Others seem to struggle how to
> verbalize things.  Normally, they demo the task and have the information
> seeker watch what they are doing
>
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