Week 10 EbscoHost Family of Databases and Ebsco eBooks

Sunday, December 2, 2012

A patron asks, “What foods have zinc in them?” You scratch your head. Your reference collection is small and outdated. Where do you turn?

Dr. Oz just mentioned a rare medical condition. Where can I find out more about it?

A high school student is doing a project on the Harlem Renaissance. Where can the student find good, scholarly information?

My administrator wants me to learn more about the latest trends in my field. Where can I look?

The answer? EbscoHost.  EbscoHost delivers full-text journal articles from scholarly publications and popular magazines. Titles range from Agricultural Research to Reading Research Quarterly to Good Housekeeping to Newsweek. Ebsco brings you feature articles, book and movie reviews, editorials and more.

EbscoHost includes over a dozen different databases.  The entire list is here.  There are general databases and specialty ones like Georef.  This number of options can seem rather daunting to try to decide what database or databases to use.  Most public and school libraries will have good luck using one or two of the following:

• Academic Search Complete – comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database
• Masterfile Premier -Designed specifically for public libraries, this multidisciplinary database provides full text for nearly 1,700 periodicals with full-text information. Covering virtually every subject area of general interest, it also contains full text for nearly 500 reference books and over 164,400 primary source documents, as well as an Image Collection of over 592,000 photos, maps & flags. This database is updated daily.
• MiddleSearch Plus- full text for more than 140 popular, middle school magazines. All full text articles included in the database are assigned a reading level indicator (Lexiles). Full text is also available for thousands of biographies and historical essays. Middle Search Plus also contains 84,774 biographies, 105,786 primary source documents, and a School Image Collection of photos, maps and flags
• Primary Search- full text for more than 70 popular magazines for elementary school research. All full text articles included in the database are assigned a reading level indicator (Lexiles), and full text information dates as far back as 1990.

Discovery Exercise
Create a blog post discussing the following questions and other observations you have about EbscoHost . All resources can be accessed via this alphabetical list.

1.  You get to these Ebsco databases a couple of ways.  The easiest way is to go to the MARVEL homepage by clicking on the alphabetical list link above.  Pick one of the databases mentioned above from the alphabetical list or pick Ebsco Host from the list and then choose the database from that list.

2. One of the first things to figure out is what journals and books are actually indexed in the database.  To do that, click on “Publications” in the blue menu bar at the top of the page.  Scroll down the list or search for a popular magazine title.  Is it covered in the database you’re in?

Now, click “Basic Search” and type a search in the search box. Search for answers to the question about zinc in foods posed at the beginning of the post if you can’t think of something else. Review the results, selecting an article to see what kind of information you can find. Discuss your results.

3. Look at 2 or 3 other participants’ blogs to see what they discovered. Comment if you like.

Ebsco eBooks (formerly NetLibrary)

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a larger nonfiction collection at your library? NetLibrary provides all Maine libraries with an expansive non-fiction collection containing books on topics ranging from Kathy Ross’s craft books to resume books to historical information about Maine. Other books include many classic novels, “Idiot’s Guides”, “Cliffs Notes” and more.

NetLibrary books are limited to one user per book, so you may get an “item in use” message when you try to view a book. The books are released after 15 minutes of inactivity or by “closing item” when you are done looking at the book.

Discovery Exercise:

Create a blog posting discussing the following questions and other observations you have about NetLibrary. All resources can be accessed via this alphabetical list. For best results when accessing NetLibrary from home, close all browser windows and open a new window. You should not need to type in your library barcode and password again.

1. Do a search for a topic that interests you. Note the default search is “full text.” You may want to change the search to keyword. Review your findings and observations.

2. Constitution Day is looming and several students need more material. Search NetLibrary and recommend some appropriate titles.

3. A class is doing projects on Western history. They have exhausted the library’s print collection. In NetLibrary, click “Advanced Search.” In the Publisher box, type “Nebraska” or “Oklahoma.” Report your findings.