Netlibrary

I have actually recommended this database to patrons and used it myself a few times, but have not gotten the change to look at it in-depth. #1 I first did a subject search for running and came up with some good books. My favorites were: "New York Running Guide" and "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jogging and Running." I really like how you can just choose a section of the book from the left-hand side and just jump in! The only thing I didn't like was that there was not a good selection of new books. #2 For the fitness section, I chose the books "Yoga for Busy People" and "The Health Fitness Handbook". These both seemed to have pertinent information that a fitness instructor could use. #3 I got 81 results when I did this, I did not think I would get much for results by looking by the publisher; but many of them had something to do with history. I would not have thought about looking that way. I don't think I got as much as if I would have tried "Oklahoma" by keyword or subject. I definitely want learn how to use this more so I can suggest it to patrons. It would be really useful, especially for those older books no one wants to lend out anymore.

Gale

The title I chose to look up for the first question was The Gale Encyclopedia of Children's Health: Infancy through Adolescence. This was divided into four volumes. I looked up the article about toilet training. I also looked up an article about assessment in the Education book. I found a lot of good information in both books. I like how you can find really scholarly articles and also ones that are easy to read and understand. That would be good for the variety of patrons that we see. I can see telling all kinds of people about this. I typed "Reading Education" into the basic search box and it came up with 34 articles. I chose to read one entitled "School Readiness" from the Encyclopedia of Education. I thought it had good information and was easy to understand. I also liked the citation tools which shows how to cite an article a variety of ways. There is also a "search within this publication" feature which allows you to search for a keyword in an article. All in all, I really liked this site.

PROQUEST

I haven't really used Proquest much since college; I forgot how much I like it. I looked up some medical information and found a lot of articles I have never been able to find before; ranging from ultra-medical texts I could barely understand to articles in Glamour and Marie Claire. There are so many publications to pick from; I couldn't believe how many had to do with libraries! It was pretty easy to use. I like how you can choose full-text or just abstracts and that you can email the articles. This is definitely something I will recommend to more people.

SIRS Discoverer

I choose to look up information in SIRS about Apolo Ohno. I found a few articles, most were upper elementary level. There was at least one picture with most articles. I really like how you can sort by relebance, date or Lexile level. That would definitely make it easier for kids! I looked up Yemen in the Country Facts section. This was pretty cool. I liked the differendt graphic organizers that teachers could use. I like how they break up the information into sections (like government and history) instead of having a big report you have to search through for the right information. I also liked the maps, there were so many to choose from! You could use these so many ways. I looked at Spanish explorations 1513-1635. It had different colored trails for different explorers and show where Native American settlements were. It also showed a modern view of the states. It was pretty neat. I looked at the photo essays, too. I didn't like this as much. I was just expecting more pictures rather than just one picture and a short article. I thought it would be a series of photos used to tell about something. In SIRS Researcher, I looked at the pros and cons of homeschooling in the leading issues section. I liked how you can choose a topic, then it gets divided up into subtopics. The would make looking up information a lot easier for students.