Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

Parrish Library’s database of the week (2/8/13): Lynda.com

February 8th, 2013

Welcome to Database of the Week, a feature from the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management & Economics.  These weekly snapshots will give you basic information about our most relevant and beneficial online resources.

Database name:  lynda.com, from Lynda.com.

Link: www.lib.purdue.edu/libraries/mgmt, under Collections, click on the List of Business Databases.

Description/focus: lynda.com provides online video lessons on how to use specific software products.

Start with this hint: lynda.com lets you select lessons with a keyword search or from dropdown menus.  The menus cover Subject such as Illustration, Software (such as Quicken), and Vendor, such as Apple or Sony.  There are also lessons available for , Open Source software such as Drupal.  The lessons menu shows the level of difficulty.  As an example, the Intermediate Skill lessons for Microsoft Excel have 24 videos ranging from 1 hour on data validation to 4 hours on statistical analysis techniques.  lynda.com teaches Microsoft Office, Adobe,  SQL, AutoCAD, Dreamweaver and other common tools, but also includes software such as character animation, and many others.

Why you should know this tool:  The lessons at lynda.com are short, focused, and  have the right amount of information without being overwhelming. It offers over 7 hours of video lessons on Blackboard.

How this will help students:  Students can go at their own pace to learn the basics, and they can learn techniques that will make their presentations more professional and more logically organized.  Types of software include web design, content management systems, digital video, graphics, and more. Closed captioning and a transcript are available for many of the lessons.

Tags:  products, software

Cost:  3 seats, paid annually by the Libraries.

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Database of the Week comes to you from the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management & Economics. Our intent is to give you a brief introduction to a database that you may not know.  If you would like more information about this database, or if you would like a demonstration of it for a class, contact parrlib@purdue.edu.  Database of the Week is archived  at  http://guides.lib.purdue.edu/dbow . For more Purdue Libraries news, follow us on Twitter (@PurdueLibraries).

If you would like us to promote your favorite database, send an email to mdugan@purdue.edu.