The Washington County Library Services Cooperative recently switched its database subscriptions from Ebsco to Gale. As a result, some of our online resources have changed. Many of the databases that we subscribed to with Ebsco have equivalent resources in Gale. Here are some of the additions that pertain to middle and high school students.
Discovering Collection - "Aimed at middle and high school students, discovering collection provides in-depth content in literature, history, biography, science, and social studies. Students are able to access a variety of resources that will help them conduct research, complete assignments, create presentations and more."
Discovering Collection is a well-rounded database with a fairly intuitive search engine. The reference books (no magazines are included) cover a great variety of topics, making it a solid first-stop for any reports or school projects. If it has a fault (if this can be considered one), it's that it can offer students new to database research lists of too many resources for often-researched topics!
Junior Reference Collection - "Provides middle school and high school students access to biographies; information on authors and their works; data on science and scientists; information on states, nations and provinces; resources for the study of African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native North Americans and Asian Americans; information on food and recipes of the world; and more."
Although it says that it also caters to high school, I feel that the reference books compiled in the JRC (Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations, UXL Encyclopedia of Science, and many other UXL reference resources) are more on the middle school level. I found the related subject terms to the left of the search results to be helpful.
Student Resource Center Gold - "Aimed at middle and high school students. Including content based on national curriculum standards in major subject areas such as history, literature, science and social studies."
SRC Gold is a more fleshed-out version of the JRC that offers magazines, newspapers, academic journals and more primary source material, making it a stronger tool for high school assignments.
Another new database of particular interest to teachers is Educator's Reference Complete, which includes journals such as Adolescence and High School Journal, with many issues in full-text!
If you are interested in scheduling your class for a database instruction session in our computer lab, please contact us!
