Thing 12: NetLibrary

I just completed the discovery exercises for Thing #12, and I feel that this blog post warrants a narrative of my experience, rather than a mere report.

First, some background: I plan to enroll at the University of Virginia in the fall of this year, specifically in the Master's program for Urban and Environmental Planning. This is something I've wanted to do for a long time, but of course, I have been feeling a little nervous about embarking upon such a huge undertaking. When I read that the University of Virginia is a leading source of online books, I eagerly clicked the link provided in the Web Challenge page and took a look around. I was astounded to see that they have well over 5,000,000 ebooks, and now I really can't wait to take a look around their campus library.

After moving onto the excercises, I created a NetLibrary account with relative ease. To test out the search tool, I tried looking for "urban planning." After all, I am curious to learn as much as I can about the occupation. I got 98 hits, which included a number of interesting looking academic texts as well as career outlook manuals that consistently place my chosen field in the top 100 jobs for college graduates.

So, in this one step I was able to learn how to use NetLibrary, assuage some of my fears about grad school, and answer my own reference question. Rock on.