1. Your civic organization is sponsoring a community event with the theme, “Spring Holidays Around the World.” The organization needs your help in finding the following: a. Spring festival traditions from a variety of countries b. Traditional spring festival foods and their recipes c. Spring festival games or pastimes.
I browsed the selection of the left and found Nation and World topic.  Choosing the Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of World Holidays,  clicked on that and found a Calendar of Selected Holidays from the Table of contents.  I found that by going to the Index of this book a person can find all the festivals.  I also went to Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of Foods and Recipes of the World, 2012.  They actually had recipes to use!
I also used the Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of World Holidays to find games and pasttimes. 

I used the advance search to find recently added 2012 titles.  I was surprised by how many new titles there were.  I decided to look at 1990's: Music.  Very entertaining search.

 

 

1. Your patron or student is interested in literary criticism of Victor Hugo’s novel, Les Miserables. She is NOT interested in anything about the musical theater or movie versions. Click the “Full text” box, and type the novel title in the search box. Use the “Document Type” and “Subject” limiters on the right sidebar of the results page to exclude reviews, musical theater, etc., so that you get only results about the novel. Explain your process and results.
By using the limiters, it does get the user to exactly what they're looking for.  I found 51 literary criticisms of Les Miserables.  I'm sure the user would be delighted.
2. You and your colleagues are curious about the impact of Hurricane Sandy on libraries (impact, not necessarily damage). What is the date and content of the most recent information on that topic? Explain how you did your search.
I put in Hurricane Sandy, clicked full text.  Mostly got closings of libraries.
Then I went to advanced search and put in Hurricane Sandy, full text "and" impact "and" libraries.
It seems all I'm finding are articles about closings or disaster relief efforts.  Sorry, but I found nothing that helped me.  I give up.