WorldCat

1. There is many different searches that are possible. Such as a title, author, publisher, ISBN, subject and more. You can also do a combination such as title in one and author in the next.

2. I put "Twilight" in the for the title phrase. There were 3029 libraries that owned #1. The top library was Alexander Mitchell library in Aberdeen, SD. They listed all the SD libraries that had this book available first then went on to different states. When I clicked on the Alexander Mitchell library link I got this message "404 - File or directory not found.
The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable." I then went back to the search list and clicked on the title and got this Class Descriptors LC: PZ7.M5717515; PS3613.E979; Dewey: [Fic]. When you click on the link for Stephanie Meyers it gave me 494 book records of other books by her. It also showed 70 sounds records, 42 vituals, and 22 internet sources. Some records will also have the MARC display if you are looking for a catalog entry. I use this a lot when I have to do an entry that is not found elsewhere and it also helps me in finding a call number.

OAIster I did the subject phrase search with South Dakota. I got 195 records. I into the top one,Letter, Sinclair Lewis to Marcella Powers, May 15, 1942, and then access and it went to the Minnesota reflections but the letter did not show. I then went to the second one, Log Shanty with flag, woman and seven boys, and that did show in Minnesota reflections. I would think high school students would become frustrated with the results. Unless they were doing some really deep research probably for an AP class, this would be too time consuming.

NetLibrary

1. I did my search on "To Kill a Mockingbird." When I did the full text search I got 141 ebooks. Some of them just mentioned the title within the book. I do like that you can search within the ebook and see where the title appears and decide whether you can use it or not. I have a teacher that is looking for material for a lower level high school English class. It would be nice if each of the students in her class could be on the same book such as Cliff Notes to read the notes and synopsis together. When I did a keyword search I only got 2 books, Cliff Notes and Blooms. These two were about the book itself. I was disappointed that the classic were not available in ebooks.

2. I am not sure what projects the students do for Constitution Day. I did a full-text search for the United States Constitution Day. "Public Papers" by Thomas Jeffereson and "The Constitution of the United States of America" are two books that might help the students.

3. Using Nebraska in the advanced search as the publishers of the netLibrary Public 2 eContent Collection, which is what came up when I went into netlibrary, I did not get any results. I then put western history as Keyword and Publisher as Nebraska and still did not get any results. I then tried Oklahoma and still did not get any results. I have read some of the blogs and they did get results. What am I do wrong?

Gale

1. I picked Supreme Court Drama: Cases That Changed America. When I went into the table of contents I picked Near vs. Minnesota. I like how it gives a overview of the case and who brought the case, the lawyers, justice, and when the decision was made. When students are in a hurry this is a very good summary to decide if it is material that they can use. One of our social science teachers does Supreme Court Cases as an assignment and we have a lot of books but it always seems that some always need the same book. When you use Gale Virtual everyone could have the same volume and not have to wait for the other student to finish. The one I picked also had a sidebar which pulls out interesting notes about the four horsemen as they called the supreme court justices that usually sided together and controled many decisions of that time. It also gave additional reading if this article didn't cover everything that was needed. At the very bottom it gave other articles that you can click on to go to other sources that may have additional information. It also has a tool box that tells you how many pages this articles is, print preview, download, email, and the source citation. This helps students to know if this article is more information then they care to read. We tell them only print what you are willing to read. It also has the translate feature that many help ESL students. This is a very good reference source for the secondary student.

2. I did my basic search for zinc. I clicked on the first link that was titles Zinc by Judith Turner. In looking at the headings I found one that had Preparations/Natural sources. In this paragraph it gave you many food sources such as oysters, whole grain, beans, meats, yogurt and many more. It also gave you supplements and concerns about taking too much zinc. This article had a sidebar with key terms that you might need to know in reading this article. I did listen to a part of this article using the read speaker. It was a very pleasant voice and clearly understood. This article also has the tool box that is right on the top for handy use.

I also did a basic search for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and clicked on the first link. On the top of the article it broke down the paragraph topics that if you only wanted criticism for this book you could choice that link and it would jump you to that paragraph. It gives you the sources of this article and many more articles that might give you more and different information. On the left hand side of the articles are also the related subjects that may help with the search of the information that they are looking for. Great stuff!!

Proquest

1. I did a search for driving cell phones. I checked only full text articles. I always tell my students that they should check the full text because if they find an abstract of the perfect article the odds of us having the whole the article in the library aren't very good. I did notice the Find Text button of some but most students don't have the time to order it from the state library or our sources. The results were 422 documents. I like the suggest box for narrowing your topic. Sometimes what the students are thinking and what the writers of Proquest are thinking aren't the same terms so it is good to see some suggestions there. From the box I picked Cellular telephones AND Traffic accidents & safety which was closer to what I was looking for. I got results of 333 documents which is still a lot but I noticed that all were not full text so clicked on the link to show only full text and got 137. The students like Proquest because they seem to have most topics that they are looking for.

2 I searched for School Library Journal. They were all full text articles from 1996 to the present. You could also have the new issues delivered to you via the RSS. That is nice then you don't have to keep checking when the new issue comes out. I use this a lot when a teacher or student sees an article somewhere and wants a copy of the article. If they have the name of the publication and the date it is easy to go in and find the article. They think it is wonderful.

SIRS Researcher

From the leading issues list, I picked banned books. There were 34 sources found. There were 18 newspaper, 3 magazine, 2 viewpoints, 1 reference, and 10 graphics/media. The student could pick all or only the type they would be using. The overview gave a summary as to what would be found in these sources. When you clicked on more it would give you terms to know on the left and pros and cons issues on the right along with events, key figures, organizations, and primary sources. At the bottom of this pages, it also gives a one sentence summary and the MLA citation. This page may be printed or emailed for further use. The research tools help the students not only with the overview but give them a timeline, global impact, statistics, and tools to help them organized there work. Each of these sections had more articles that pertained to what was presented in this section. It was all nicely organized if the students would take the time to dig through the material. I like the pro and con issues and essential questions. This takes a topic and narrows it down for the student to concentrate on one part of the topic. I chose "Free Speech Must Be Balanced Against the Rights of Others." It gives the students the option to read aloud, translates the written word into various languages, provides a summary, and does a MLA citation. It also gives them related subjects and articles if they need more on the subject. Again this could be emailed or printed out for later use. The students use Researcher a lot to pick topics and present speeches and term papers.

SIRS Discoverer

1. I did a search in Discoverer for armadillos. I found 70 articles and 37 of them were magazine articles. I like if you are looking for a magazine article and not a newspaper you can click on the tab and only get the magazines. Most of the read levels were easy or moderate. It is hard on my computer to see the difference in colors so I had to go into the article and see what the reading levels were for sure. I only found one of the 70 that was in the challenging level. Most of the articles had pictures which is nice for this age. I liked that before you went into the article that the icon was there to let you know that there was a picture. Sometimes students are looking for a picture rather then content. A lot of the web image sites are blocked at our school so this would be a source to find pictures of various items. It also told you if the article was about a person using the P, such as the article "A Learning Link to the Los Angeles Zoo " which was about the animal keeper Jami Shoemaker. Sometimes when a student is looking for facts articles like this one would probably not be there first choice even though they have good information. It is nice that you can sort my date, relevance, and reading level. When needing a current article you can sort by date and get the newest one on top. Sometimes the teacher will only let students use articles that are less than 5 years old so this would be a good tool in that case. Good and colorful source.

2. I picked Germany as my country. The first thing that was available was printable worksheets in various levels to organize the facts. This articles also provided a map and a picture of the flag. It then gave the facts in a very organized way with headings being population, geography & weather, economy, government, and history. It gave a very nice timeline of Germany's history. At the end Discoverer also gave you contacts for more information such as the the German Embassy in the United States. It also told you all the sources that they used to get the information in the article. There was also links to related articles at the very bottom if the information was not enough.

I selected Brazil for the maps of the world. The search produced 12 different maps. Some were historical and had certain years of how the country looked at the time. One of them showed where the sugar cane was grown in Brazil. It was hard to find a detailed map of just Brazil but there was one. The maps also had some related articles for each picture which was very nice. It also was nice that these maps can be printed for use in school projects.

I decided to do biographies. I put in Edgar Allen Poe. Discoverer found 7 articles. Two newspapers, 4 magazines, and 3 pictures. I'm not quite sure how that adds up to 7. I am assuming that some pictures are in the articles that are already mentioned. In the pictures it also gave you articles that the pictures went along with. It also gave you reading levels. Most of the them were easy and moderate with one challenging. Discoverer also gave you subjects to further explore if you wanted to dig deeper. At the end of some articles, they also gave you further reading if you needed more information.