I really like the idea of ebooks and I like how convenient and portable they are for users as well as how searchable they are. Unfortunately I think the NetLibrary interface is clunky and not the most user-friendly platform (it once took Rosemary and I to figure out how to move between pages in a NetLibrary ebook). I think reference books work better as ebooks than other types of books; this probably varies by personal preference, though.
The NetLibrary ebook I found is part of Project Gutenberg. It is called Recipes Tried and True and was compiled by the Ladies' Aid Society of the First Presbyterian Church of Marion, Ohio; published by the Press of Kelley Mount in 1894. I'm not sure this book would be particularly useful for our students, except maybe those in nutrition, history or anthropology classes (or maybe even gender studies classes, because of the commentary that accompanies the recipes).
I've been interested in old cookbooks for a long time; I've loved looking through my grandma's collection since I was little. There's something very charming to me about imprecise directions and measuring in "pinches" and "little bits." I enjoyed browsing through commentary with the recipes as well. My favorite so far comes from the chapter on pie: "Ingenuity, good judgement, and great care should be used in making all kinds of pastry" (28). Melissa thinks I should attempt one of the recipes in this ebook...I'll have to see what I can come up with. =)
I really enjoyed playing around with the concept map in Credo Reference. It would be a great discovery tool for students needing to come up with paper or research topics. However, the more I used the map, the more frustrating it became for me because it's not always very clear how the topics are related. This would not be a major issue for someone looking at a map for a subject area they have some background knowledge about--it would be fairly easy to intuit the connections between subjects if you had prior knowledge of them. Searching in a subject area outside of one's background knowledge could potentially be frustrating if the related topics aren't explicit about how they are related.
I think it's a great resource for visually-oriented people and for discovery but it's probably not the best resource for in-depth research. (Besides, Credo Reference has reference books, which are not supposed to be used for in-depth research most of the time anyway).
There may be poetry in pie, but I also discovered that there's pie in poetry. I found an interesting tidbit about pie in the process of using the concept map. The lines "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie / when the pie was opened the birds began to sing" from the nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence" are indeed based in history. Romans would enclose live birds in pastry shells and release them during celebratory functions...not delicious but probably quite the spectacle.
"pie." The Columbia Encyclopedia . New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Credo Reference. 23 October 2008
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