Netlibrary

1. I did a search on the Revolutionary War without changing the search to keyword and I got quite a few hits- but few related to what I was looking for. I redid the search using keyword and got one book, The Revolutionary War: America Goes to War. I've used Netlibrary several times before and it is very useful when trying to find bits and pieces of data or reference material.

2. I did a keyword search for Constitution Day but found no results. Once I changed the search to full-text alot of results came up that talked about Constitution Day or about the Constitution itself. I would recommend looking at A Companion to the United States Constitution and Its Amendments, The Constitution of the United States of America, and Representing Popular Sovereignty.

3. I did the advanced search on Nebraska in the publisher field and got 85 results.

Gale Virtual Reference Library

Part 1- I looked in the World War II Reference Library book and picked volume 3 "Biographies" from the multi-volume drop-down menu. This brought up a list of biographies for major figures from World War II. From the list of figures, I clicked on Frank Capra, bringing up an article on his life. At the end of the the article is a list of books for further information and sidebar articles with even more information. I could see students using this for background for papers and perhaps even browsing for topics for papers.

Part 2- I did a basic search on zinc and clicked on the link for the first article- buried in the article I did find some of the foods that contain zinc such as oysters, whole grains, beans and nuts. I did another basic search for huckleberry finn and limited the search research to critical essays. I clicked the link on the first article which began with information about Mark Twain and then talked about Huck Finn chapter by chapter. This article included sections about various themes such as equality, freedom and righteousness. It included historical context as well as media adaptations of the book. The article ended with a criticism of the work and a list of sources for further reference.

ProQuest

Basic Search

I did a basic search on the topic "Endangered Animals" limiting to fulltext. On the results page, the first box has other Suggested Topics that could be used to narrow the topic. Next is the listing of resources found- just a citation and links to an abstract and fulltext. Using the tabs, the information can be set in groups such as scholarly journals, magazines, trade publications, newspapers and reference/reports. There are also links to refining searches, setting up alerts and creating rss feeds.

Publications Search

I did a search for history and got 109 journals. Behind each title in the list is whether its available in fulltext and the years ProQuest has. Creating an rss feed is also available for some of the titles.

SIRS

I've never really used Sirs before. Sirs Discoverer looks like it would be very useful for kids. I searched for otters and got 266 hits-most including a picture. The information is rated by reading level. I did another search for the country of Kiribati. The link had facts such as population, government and economy. It provided a short historical timeline and other sources to contact for further information. The record also had 2 photos: one of the Kiribati flag and the other was a map showing its world locale. I played around with the maps feature of Sirs and it would be a great tool to help students with geography lessons. The last thing I looked at in Discoverer was the pictures feature. Here you can browse for pictures of people, places and things.

I clicked on Arts Censorship in Sirs Researcher. The first thing I noticed was the topic overview which gave a quick definition of Arts Censorship. To the right there was the pro/con box with more information about the topic. Information such as a historical timeline, global impact and statistics are also provided. There was also articles from magazines and newspapers. This would be a good place to get started on a paper or speech- an excellent place for debaters. I also checked out Curriculum Pathfinders which allows students to select a area of study such as social sciences. Once on the topic page, you can browse various subjects. It would be a good place for students to start if they werent sure of what to write a paper about.