Databases

Our school district subscribes to the EBSCOhost package for approximately $1.00 per student. I was surprised to read the postings that teachers did not know how or where to access the databases at their schools, which also means that the teachers and students are not taking advantage of being able to work from home either--an expensive resource if not being used to its full potential.

I went to an EBSCO workshop held at our DRC so I would learn how to use these databases better and then teach the teachers and students how to use them. I went into the computer lab the other day and I was very happy to see that every student was using either EBSCO, World Book Advanced, or the Biography database for information for their Social Studies research essay. I learned that not all districts have a DRC. Our district is so fortunate to have such a proactive principal at our DRC who arranges workshops, such as EBSCO.

The public library in Prince George includes the same EBSCOhost package that our school subscribes to, plus many more databases. I have recently accessed the Prince George Library databases because the teen librarian comes to our district teacher-librarian meetings once a month and she showed us the Tumble Readables, audio book downloads. Although, I teach secondary students, I love to use this site for my grandchildren. I also used the BC Library to Go audio book download database. I was interested in this site because I ordered four MP3 Players, so that we can download audio books for visually impaired, struggling readers, or reluctant readers for Independent or class novel studies. I was very surprised to see such a variety of databases covering a wide assortment of topics, such as Global Road Warrior; Hobbies and Crafts; PubMed Central Canada. I can see several ways to use many of the public library databases matching them with certain classes, such as Law, Tourism, Planning 10, and Textiles and Crafts, just to name a few--making the teachers aware of the vast amount of resources that they can access for their lessons.

Gale Group has won awards for being the best research database for two years in a row (http://www.galeschools.com/media.htm). EBSCO and Gale are easy to use.

I am more familiar with Ebscohost for students grade 9 - adult. On the righthand side, students can click on full text and peer reviewed, then update results to narrow down the number of hits. Students can choose the earliest dates of articles for a particular subject by sliding the bar or typing in the year. On the left hand side, students can choose source type, or choose another search term from the thesaurus list. Students can save their results by clicking in a box to add to a folder, they can email, print, make notes, get the proper citation format, etc. A Lexile number is given to most articles to indicate the reading difficulty. When the student clicks on the title of an article, they get an abstract. Searchasaurus is for elementary students. Students can use words or icons to search. It is important that teachers provide multiple opportunities for students to practice their research skills, so that they become familiar and use with ease all the functions in the databases.


While searching for articles, I found the following article of an evaluation of online databases, such as World Book etc. and some other online sources not mentioned in the evaluations of online books. I will check out these sources later when I have more time. Looked very interesting.

Troutner, J. (2009). Online Textbooks: An Opportunity for Teacher-Librarians. Teacher Librarian, 37(2), 60-61. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.