Transcript: The Marvels of Marvel Video

Tim: Marvel!, Maine's Virtual Library, is a collection of newspapers, encyclopedias, magazines, scholarly journals, and trusted reference sources, available to all Maine citizens. If you don't have a computer at home, you can visit your local library.

Tim: Hey, Ralph. [Ralph Stanley, wooden boatbuilder, Southwest Harbor]

Ralph: Hi, there.

Tim: Tim Sample here.

Molly: Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Molly.

Tim: Nice to meet you, Molly. Well, I got a lot of questions, and a library is a good place for questions.

Tim: Funding for Marvel! comes from legislation, the joint efforts of the Maine State Library, the University of Maine, Folger Library, the Public Utilities Commission, and the Maine Telecommunications Educational Access Fund.

Tim: Now I got to tell you. I'm interested, a little bit fascinated, and kind of nervous about this technology. What exactly -- what is Marvel!?

Molly: Well, Marvel! is Maine’s Virtual Library, and it's a collection of newspapers and magazines and encyclopedias, trusted reference sources. The only difference is, it’s available on your computer.

Tim: So this is actual real reference sources. That's part of what I was nervous about. This is not some 9-year-old in Cleveland that skipped school and is writing a blog, and I’m gonna think it's a fact if I’m looking for information.

Molly: No, if you're looking for real trusted information, this is the place to come. There's a lot of good stuff on the Internet, too, but you’re not gonna get to Marvel! by using Google.

Tim: Okay. But you can get -- if I come into the library... let's say I come into the library, and I want to do some research, and what I have available to me, via the old-fashioned method of getting it off the shelf, is not getting me where I want to go.

Tim: And let's say I'm in Bangor, and I want to get some information about an article that came out a year ago in Bangor, but I can’t find the newspaper, and I’m trying to get that because somebody has asked about that, and I want to get that to my office. How do I use Marvel to get that?

Molly: Well, there's a source on here called “Proquest Newspapers”, and if you go on the left here and click on "newspapers"...

Tim: I'm gonna do that, right there. Click.

Molly: And this is a collection of, really, newspapers nationwide and international newspapers. But we really want "Maine Newsstand", because you mentioned Bangor. So if you click right on "Maine Newsstand"...

Tim: There are Bangors all over the world, you know, but it's not the real one. They always say, "did you ever notice that ever since Roger Miller came out with that song, people call it 'Bang-er'?” Nobody in Maine ever calls it Bang-er, but that's just one of the many things that I have problems with in the modern world. So, "Basic Search"...

Molly: So if you want to do a Basic Search on Tim Sample, I would recommend you put “Tim Sample” in quotes so it searches both Tim and Sample together.

Tim: Okay, but it doesn't mean I have to go around for the rest of my life saying, "Hi, I'm Tim Sample.'“

Molly: No.

Tim: Oh, okay. But I'll put it in quotes. Do you know who invented the use of the fingers to mean "quote"?

Molly: No.

Tim: It was a Maine humorist named Charles Fairer Brown, who almost invented stand-up comedy back in the 1850s. There's a lot I know that has no practical application in the real world, but it’s interesting. Okay and then "Search”.

Molly: And then click right on "Search.”

Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So far so good

Molly: And you can tell that it's working because of that little spinning thing. So it's looking. And you've got on "Tim Sample,” one of 309 articles.

Tim: So these are actually -- what I like about this, 'cause sometimes you can put something in there, put your name, and you get millions, but they're not really real things about you. It's like, a guy named Tim that got a sample of deep-dish, southern-fried chicken-finger pies and got ill from it.

Tim: Okay. So we got a hundred -- oh, see, now this is interesting because "Peter and the Wolf.” I wrote a Maine humor version of that, and that's something about that. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna move down here. Are these in order in terms of date?

Molly: They're in order of most recent first, but you can change that if you want, or you can just click onto the next page.

Tim: Let's say it was a year ago. I'm gonna click over to six, and we're up to, okay, 2005.

Molly: Now, we could have also narrowed it to a specific date when we first did your search, too.

Tim: But, see, that wouldn't know what date I'm looking for. But let's say about a year ago. Okay, here's a spelling bee that I did -- "can you spell 'perspire'?” I don't really need to because I got all the cards right in front of me. You're the one that has to perspire. That's one of the great things about being a game show host. You have all the stuff right there. You can act smart and be really numb. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Molly: Let's say you find a particular article that you want. You can just click right on it.

Tim: Okay, here's me with Noel Stookey doing a benefit for Camp Capella. They got pictures in here?

Molly: This one does not have pictures. You do get all the text, but --

Tim: I like the way you talk. You don't really come from Maine -- pictures.

Molly: And then you'll notice that your search terms are highlighted for you.

Tim: Okay. Now, that is slick as a cup of custard. Now I got a couple other questions for you. I wrote my questions down so I wouldn’t get too nervous. So why is Marvel a better option than just going on Google?

Molly: Well, it's not necessarily a better option. It's one option. It depends on what your question is. It's just another tool to use in your research. I would say it is better in that if you are looking for accuracy. If you want to find out who the author is, that's not always easy to tell on the Internet, as you mentioned earlier.

Tim: I can never tell. Yeah, I can never tell who wrote -- I want to know that. I try to go to the bottom, and I can't tell. But I notice on these, it’ll say -- at least right here it says where it came from.

Molly: Well, it's the Bangor Daily News.

Tim: Joni Averill. So you know who wrote it, you know what the publication was, and you know what the date of publication was -- even the page, in case you were keeping track.

Molly: And let's say you wanted to send this back to your office or send it to someone else. All you would have to do is click right up on "email.”

Tim: Okay, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna send it over there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim: And then it's working. And I put my name just so they know it's me. Not in quotes -- I don't have to put it in quotes.

Molly: No, you don't have to put it in quotes.

Tim: I am "Tim Sample,” though. I kind of like that. Okay. Timmy. From Tim. And the subject is "article.”

Tim: Dah-dah-dah. You notice how I can really whip around that keyboard. I'm gonna put email address. I'm gonna send it to my office and Pamela, but I can't put the "q” in there, or it won't go anywhere. There's no q's in Pamela. All right. That's the name of my new movie -- "There's no q's in Pamela.” I haven't written the movie yet, but nice title, anyway. You got to start somewhere. @TimSample.com. Go there, folks. There's a lot to buy, and I need the money. It's a long winter.

Tim: Okay. So, like that. And the message – “article.” I'm just gonna say, "check this out.” "Check this out.” I won't say "chummy.” and then just "send email.” but I can send it to a lot of people if I wanted to.

Molly: And that's all there is to it. And then they have it immediately.

Tim: Confirmation. It's been processed. Wow! Cool. That's cool. Okay, so I can be somewhere. Can I do this if I was out in Chicago, O'Hare, waiting for a plane?

Molly: It's only available to people in Maine, all Maine citizens.

Tim: But I'm a Maine citizen. So when I'm traveling, do I have to show I.D. Or something likes that?

Molly: No, but I think it's to be used when you're inside Maine.

Tim: So if you're in Maine -- Marvel is Maine --

Molly: It's Maine's Virtual Library. And I think the reason it's available to Maine citizens is because it's really paid for by Maine people.

Tim: That's normal. That's good. I mean, if we're paying for it, we ought to have it, shouldn't we?

Molly: That's right.

Tim: They get enough out there in O'Hare. Do you know how much you have to pay for a hot dog at O'Hare?

Molly: No.

Tim: A lot. It's about $8 now, I think, but you got plenty of time to eat them, I'll tell you, because you sit there for a long time.

Tim: All right. So now it's good for this basic searching. What if I want more information than what we just went through? Can I go deeper into this?

Molly: We just went to one thing on here, but, really, there are so many other things to look for.

Tim: Okay, I got a question for you. I got a question. You mentioned earlier. So we already found out that we can't go outside of Maine and go to Marvel, but we're in Maine now. On Marvel. But what if I want to go to the New Yorker?

Molly: Let me show you "MasterFILE Premier.” That's the collection where you're gonna find most of your everyday kind of magazines.

Tim: MasterFILE?

Molly: Yes, so click on the "m.”

Tim: On "m” for "MasterFILE.”

Molly: And then try right here, "MasterFILE Premier.”

Tim: Okay, so far, so good. But you can't sit here with me the whole time at every library. See, that's what makes me nervous. Okay, find.

Molly: Is there a certain article you were looking for that was in the New Yorker?

Tim: Yes. There have been two articles by Oliver Sacks. Do you know him, the neurologist? He wrote a book called "the man who mistook his wife for a hat.” and I was actually on a beach one time, and I saw that book cover. I was walking along. And I said to the woman that was reading it. I said, "that's an interesting title. What is the book about?”

Tim: She said, "it's about a man who mistook his wife for a hat.” and I became a big fan ever since. Anyway.

Molly: All right, now in the "Find” box type in Oliver Sacks, and maybe in quotes, too, like you did with Tim Sample.

Tim: Oliver Sacks. yes.

Tim: I remember a lady that used to live in town with me, and she kept these paper bags, and she had thousands of them. And I always wondered what she did with "all of her sacks.” so, uh...

Molly: [laughs]

Tim: Full text.

Molly: And we're gonna do "Search within the full text.”

Tim: And do I put New Yorker here?

Molly: You could, but let's leave that off for a minute. Let's just see what we get for results first.

Tim: Okay.

Molly: And then hit "Search.”

Tim: Search.

Molly: And now you got, as results, you've got periodicals, newspapers, reference books, and biographies all on Oliver Sacks.

Tim: If I wanted to know -- for instance, let's say instead of writing a book about Maine people, I was writing a book about people who write about neurology, and I wanted to quote something. I could find that… in this. I could find this under him, and then you could narrow it to his books, reviews of his books, fiction, and letters to the editor.

Molly: And if you click on that, it’ll sort all of these results.

Tim: That's what I want -- letters to the editor. You know why I like letters to the editor? Because a lot of nutty folks write to the editor. They have nothing else to do except write to the editor, and so you get a real wide range of demographics. "seeing is believing.”

Molly: And that one happens to be by Oliver Sacks.

Tim: Okay, he wrote in. Well, he's a nutty person himself, I guess. He writes to the editor. No, but now he's -- oh! He creates a cartoon.

Molly: So you're getting nature magazine. You're getting new scientist, science news.

Tim: Yeah.

Molly: All kinds of magazines. So you're not getting websites. You're getting actual magazines.

Tim: That's really great. And this is one of nine.

Molly: And as you did with the Bangor Daily News article, you can also email these. So since we're not maybe hooked up to a printer right now, let's say you wanted to email this to yourself. You'd be able to do the same thing.

Molly: You would click on the -- well, there's a couple different things you could do. If you wanted more than one, you could click this "add” symbol …over on the right-hand side.

Tim: And would the whole article go?

Molly: The whole article would go in the email. And not only one, but also you could do a few at a time, as well.

Tim: Cool. So this, again, would be very helpful if I'm working on a project here. I have sometime, and I'm working on a project and I want to send some background information.

Tim: You know what? I have to tell you, what I like the most about this is that it does not get me off into these labyrinths of people's opinions. I've never heard of that before. That's the reason I don't use the general "Googling" things more than I do, because I get overwhelmed with information. I get too much information.

Molly: And you mentioned a good point about being able to evaluate information. This is a great resource for kids, too, because they don't, maybe in some cases, don't really know who the author is of a web page or how old it is or why that person's an authority on the web.

Tim: That's the important thing that I see becoming a challenge. My youngest is 16, and the idea of a vetted manuscript or a source that's been checked is less clear to 16-year-olds than it is to 36-year-olds because the notion that something, just because it is published on the Internet, may not be accurate is kind of a confused notion for a generation that grew up with just everything thrown up against the wall…

Tim: So I think that's important, because I know some of these, and wikipedia's one of them, that classrooms will not allow students to use those -- what are they called? -- user-generated, where the material -- somebody could go on mine. I have a wikipedia thing. They could go on there and change it to say that I was born in Massachusetts or something, and unless I went on there, I would never know.

Molly: And people would believe that.

Tim: And people would believe it because they would see it, and they think, "oh, they can't put that on there if it's not true.” So that's a really important point. I think this is Marvelous, and I got to make sure I got all my...

Tim: So, okay, here's a question I got, and this is kind of important. Who pays for all this? I don't pay for this. If I come into the library...

Molly: Well, this all started with the University of Maine partnering with the Maine State Library. And if a school or a library had to buy this by itself, everything that's on here, it would cost a half a million dollars. So it was really a partnership between the University of Maine, the Maine State Library, and then the Legislature, too, legislating the money for that, and then the Maine Telecommunications Fund.

Tim: So all of the cost that goes into organizing, presenting, and creating this is part of our state taxes, and everyone can use this, and there's no other fees involved.

Molly: That's right. And if you don't have a computer at home, which many people don't, they can go into their local library and use this, too. And it's available in schools and from home. You can get to this from home.

Tim: So it's just another way you can access clear, well-documented information and know that what you're getting is real accurate information, and it's also organized in the ways we were just looking at so…

Tim: You don't have to -- part of what bothers me is some times the right number is 160, not 160 million if you're looking for answers. Most of the time, when I'm looking at research, I have a book to write or deadline on a project, and so I can't really afford to get lost in a whole pile of information, some of which is probably important or good, but I can't tell the difference between that and somebody's opinion. So this really does a lot of that work for you.

Molly: With this, you can narrow it by date. You can narrow it by a certain periodical, and so you can really focus your search a lot more.

Tim: And if you want to know who originally said, "take my wife, please” -- was it Henny Youngman or not? That's the sort of questions that keep me up at night. You can find out.

Molly: You could. And another tool might be even better for a question like that, too. I like to stress that this is just one tool that you can use in your research. Sometimes an almanac is what you need. Sometimes an actual book in your hand is what you need. And then this is something else that people can use in their research.

Tim: So you have to know what tool you're looking for. Like I always say, an ice pick is a wonderful tool, but it's a terrible tool to take your lug nuts off of your pickup truck with. It's a good tool. It's the wrong tool for that job, and vice versa. So…this still doesn't replace the human brain. You have to know what you're looking for and know what this tool is good for. And if you know what you're looking for, and you know how to use this tool, you can get a lot of accurate information fast and cut out a lot of the baloney.

Molly: I would say if you're looking for up-to-date medical information, business, looking for recent magazines and newspapers, encyclopedias, this is the place to go.

Tim: See, medical information. I hear horror stories. I have a friend who's an oncologist, and he tells his patients, "do not go on the Internet when you are diagnosed with some condition.” he said it's horrible because people will go, and they'll get some crazy information that's 20 years out of date or off on some alternate-universe website that tells you that you have to eat the soles off of ancient sneakers in order to get well. But he said … but this would solve that problem because you'd be aware of what the source is and when the information was published. I'm just as likely to get the wrong information if I didn't have Marvel!

Molly: Well, you're right. There's a lot of misinformation on the web, and it's especially dangerous if it's medical or legal. People aren't quite sure what they're looking for. We're not doctors, obviously, but what might be on here are medical journals and professional journals that the medical personnel are actually reading, and it would be great for even physicians to know that this also exists for free to Maine. There are a lot of scholarly, academic-level journals in this collection, too.

Tim: I think it's great. I'm sold. And I don't even have to buy it. I already paid for it. I paid my taxes. Folks, this is Marvelous. It's Marvel, and it's Marvelous. And I have a little ditty --

Tim: Marvel! A little poem, or, as we say in Maine, a "poym.” p-o-y-m. I think it comes from a hawaiian --

Molly: I just have to say this is better than having it read on NPR.[National Public Radio]

Tim: Oh, thank you. I would certainly hope so.

"Marvel!

Whether adult or a child or an entrepreneur, a teacher, a banker, come take a tour.

A doctor, a coach, a scholar, a cook, a reader who's hunting for a good book.

All you'll need is Internet access.

If you don't have it, just come in and ask us."

Molly: [laughs]

Tim: There. I think you'll have a good time with this. I'm having a good time. Thank you, Molly. It's such a pleasure. Huh? Who has more fun than people? That's what I say.

Tim: Funding for Marvel comes from legislation, the joint efforts of the Maine State Library, the University of Maine, Folger Library, the Public Utilities Commission, and the Maine Telecommunications Educational Access Fund. Go to... Contact your local library to learn more about Marvel!

Resources

Services

About the library

Transcript: The Marvels of Marvel Video