[nabs-l] academic library access

[Carly Mihalakis]

Good morning, everyone,

What about when tech doesn't work? At least when 
a reader is humanoid, you are likely to get work done.
CarAt 03:46 PM 1/9/2016, Ashley Bramlett via nabs-l wrote:
>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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