Monday, January 23, 2012

Picking a Book

For the semester long research project I have to do, I am going to research people with Down Syndrome, and in specific, the medical advances that have occurred since it was first diagnosed.  I'll be doing specific research on the advances, but also general research on the topic since I don't know very much about people with Down Syndrome. When I first started the research on the SCSU library page, I went to advance search, and searched for Down Syndrome and Medical Advances, and sadly, no results came back.  I then searched simply for Down Syndrome and 91 results came back, and it seemed to be a lot of books for parents.  Then I searched Down Syndrome and diagnosis and only returned one result that is a government document.  When I searched the public library website and typed in Down Syndrome and Medicine in the advance search, 2 results came back, one for bowl movements and the other was children stories who have Down Syndrome.  I feel like I'm lucking out! When I went back to the SCSU library search, I found the section that has ebooks and found a couple there.  I personally don't like ebooks, I don't find them enjoying to read, I like being able to hold a book and to make markings, whether its highlighting or if I can't do that, post it marks.  I read a paragraph of one of the ebooks and stopped because I disliked it so much!  I have a smart phone, and can access the internet, so I would assume I can pull up ebooks on my phone, but I know I would never use that feature.  As I said earlier I tried the public library search.  When I just searched for Down Syndrome, I came across a lot of fictional books which I wouldn't use for research, so I personally didn't find the public library to be as useful.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Lindsey,

    Thank you for sharing your experience searching for books and EBooks about Down's Syndrome.

    Just for the heck of it, I also searched our Miller Center Library OPAC for books about Down's Syndrome. You are right--we do have a lot of books about the topic, mostly focusing on children. I am going to look for some titles about adults with Down's Syndrome so that we can add them to the collection. This is important, as we do have some group homes in the area specifically for adults with Down's Syndrome.

    You might find more information about adults with Down's Syndrome in other books that cover the topic in a broader manner. In order to do that, you would need to find out how Down's Syndrome is categorized, then find out if there are books dealing with that category of disorders (which may have a chapter or two on the subject).

    Keep me posted...it is very exciting research!

    Sincerely,
    Professor Wexelbaum

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