Find Me the Money

Every dollar counts in today’s school libraries, where a resource is evaluated not just by the cost, but also by how many students will utilize it. A recent survey on the electronic discussion list LM_NET revealed that many school librarians rely on their state to help provide (and pay for) databases that their students can access from the school media center or at their public library. Most respondents also reported having limited budgets and that any database with a price tag greater than $1,500 is more than they are willing—or able—to pay.

So school librarians have learned to get the most bang for their buck, especially when it comes to big-ticket digital resources. Overall, general databases, or “packages,” that offer a variety of resources (magazines, newspapers, photos, reference sources, eBooks, etc.) for one low price are more likely to appeal to today’s frugal school librarian. However, there are some excellent specialized products coming to market that can augment collections tremendously. These products will challenge school librarians to seek additional funding or to find ways to purchase cooperatively.

Grades 7 and up.

Cost Flat rate of $450 for K–12 schools. District pricing is $450 for first building and $200 for each additional building. For universities, public libraries, and other nonprofits, unlimited access starts at $895 up to a maximum of $3,795. Alternative simultaneous use price is $495 for the first user, $995 for up to five users, and $150 for each additional user. Individual subscriptions are also available.

The Big Picture If you lack resources on the history, achievements, and contributions of African Americans, the Oxford African American Studies Center (AASC) is one of the first databases that provides in one product significant research materials on well-known individuals, documents, historical events, as well as lost and scattered fragments of African-American history. Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., AASC is not only unique in its content but also in its ease of use and browseability. AASC provides students, teachers, and scholars with a wealth of resources: over 5,000 biographies; over 3,000 subject entries, ranging from Hank Aaron to Zumbi (the 17th-century Afro-Brazilian hero); primary source documents dating back to 1600, over 1000 images; maps of 90 countries; and charts and tables with information on demographics, politics, and more. Add a multilayered timeline and a specially selected list of Internet resources to provide additional research, lesson plans, classroom tools, and archival sources.

Look & Feel AASC has a clean, graphic, and easy-to-navigate home page with five sections that include tidbits to entice browsing. The “Feature of the Month” section (free to all) offers a monthly overview of extraordinary individuals or events, while “Did You Know?” and “What’s Inside?” provide additional information about the content. A “Quick Search” box is at the top right for basic searching. At the extreme left, navigation tabs on the “Content Dashboard” are “Search,” “Browse,” “Timelines,” “Links,” and “Learning Center”; they provide drop-down boxes for additional searching capabilities. Students with limited searching skills can easily browse these categories to begin research or find specific types of information under each category. While each search page changes slightly, the navigation bar remains consistent, providing an easy way to maneuver from point to point.

How it Works Students have two searching capabilities on the home page. The “Quick Search” box allows for a standard search using self-generated and Boolean search terms while the five subject tab listings on the navigation bar offer menu-driven content from which to explore. However, once within the specific subject area, students are allowed to use self-generated terms to research the subject content. To search exact terms, use quotation marks. The database supports the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT, as well as wildcards.

On the main search page, students have more control over the results and the range of searching since the database provides limiters that include the historical era (i.e. “Before 1400: Ancient and Medieval Worlds”), as well as Category of Interests (i.e. “Arts and Leisure”). Within each article, the “Look It Up” feature defines unfamiliar terms or phrases, allowing opportunities for independent research. Additional or related content on topics searched are presented as hyperlinks to research pages.

A “Biography” search allows the student to type in a known name or specific first and last names of individuals. Using additional information, such as birth and death dates or professions, students can search for unique or obscure figures within African-American history. With “Image” search, students can locate photos by title, caption, source, collection, or era, while a “Primary Source” search allows searching for original documents by title, text, author, year, commentary, era, or category. These two search areas include a wealth of often-missed historical resources that can enhance the classroom curriculum and inspire students to investigate new areas within history. The “Timeline” search includes women’s history, business, sports, military, and Africa.

Each entry can be printed or e-mailed, and for those who hate citing database resources, AASC offers an exact citation format (in either MLA or Chicago format). The citation can be downloaded and imported into a citation management software program or entered into a word document. A “Links Search” offers controlled, quality sites for additional research and information on specific subjects. Some of the same categories in the main search are listed here, bringing consistency to the Internet search.

For Students & Teachers Students and teachers in both middle school and high school should easily locate information because of the specialized search components that prompt and guide the research. Basic browsing can provide students who don’t understand how to construct database search strings with an alphabetical listing of topics. In addition, a “Filter List” section provides category information to guide the student to a specific topic. Search results are also broken into categories that are listed above the subject entry results. These categories further divide and enumerate the subjects into their specific format: biographies, primary documents, subject entries, photos, maps, images, charts, or tables.

Report Card: AASC is a great subject-specific resource that, for years, has been lacking in many school libraries. Because the core reference sources, most multivolume (Africana, 2nd edition; Black Women in America, 2nd edition; African American National Biography; Encyclopedia of African American History 1619-1895; and the Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature) are not generally found in school library collections, this database provides students with a new depth of historical, biographical, and scholarly materials on African Americans. The African American Studies Center rates a strong A; it might rate an A+ later in 2007 when scheduled updates should further enhance its depth and usability. With content updates every three months, this database will definitely surpass most collections found in school libraries. This is a great opportunity to offer a well-developed, easy-to-use specialized database on a subject area that is never fully covered by print resources.

Grades 9 and up.

Cost High school: $3,500. Middle school: $1,500. Includes unlimited, remote access.

Big Picture: EBSCO’s Literary Reference Center is one of the latest comprehensive literary databases for high school and college students and it rivals its closest competitors. It offers more than 10,000 full-text, in-depth author biographies; over 10,000 plot summaries and works overviews; more than 500 titles from the Bloom Series of literary criticisms from Chelsea House; 300 literary magazines and journals; 500,000 book reviews; and more. For a complete listing of the content, visit www.epnet.com/titleLists/lf-complete.htm.

Look & Feel The Literary Reference Center’s home page is divided into two major sections: the search area on the top left and the “Book Highlight” area directly below it. The “Book Highlight” area is unique in that it offers the user the opportunity to examine entire eBooks chapter-by-chapter in PDF format. EBooks highlighted here are changed on a regular basis. The database also provides the user with a direct link to the Taylor and Francis eBook Web site if a researcher wants to purchase a title.

The search box allows for basic searching while there is also an option to Browse Authors or Browse Most Studied Authors. Next to these options, the student is allowed to Browse Works or Browse Most Studied Works which will then display the full list of the most common literary research titles in today’s classroom. The Advanced Search and Literary Glossary links above the Search box provide the user with easy access to additional research options or information.

The three smaller sections on the home page contain the Reference Shelf, Content Spotlight, and Author in Focus. The Reference Shelf provides hyperlinks to the Literary-Historical Timeline, the Encyclopedia of Literature, a Dictionary, Citation Help, and a Research Guide. Below, the Content Spotlight provides hyperlinks to Bloom’s Major Novelists, Bloom’s Bio-Critiques, Masterplots II: Drama and Masterplots II: Poetry Series. The Author in Focus section, which contains in-depth information on a particular author and his or her works, is changed monthly and provides an email alert for users. One of the more useful components of the database is the Language interface which allows the user to change the default display language from English to one of nine other languages including Spanish, French, and Portuguese.

How it Works Students can begin their research by entering a term in the Search box on the Home page or by browsing the list of Most Studied Authors or Most Studied Works links. An Advance Search provides students with multiple research options including the use of Boolean search terms, limiters, expanders, wild cards, truncation, and proximity searching.

Limiters include full text, publication, publication dates, document types, author, author’s cultural identity, literary titles, literary characters, literary locale, genre, and more. And while Advance Search allows for the three common Boolean terms, even simple searches on the Home page can automatically be set to include “AND” between words. In addition, because Advance Search retains up to five of the most recent searches, the student can combine first and second searches (S1 AND S2)—or any combination of the first five search strings—to retrieve completely new results.

All search results can be printed, emailed, saved to a disk or added to a folder. Alerts can be created and sent directly to the student; they can be run daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. This is beneficial to students engaged in long term research.

For Students & Teachers A simple search for some less studied poets of World War I produced an extensive list of information unlikely to be found in most school libraries without advanced planning and purchases. Authors such as Rupert Brookes, John McCrae, Wilfred Owen, were quickly located along with their works. Common authors like Faulkner, Twain, and Fitzgerald, as well as works like Romeo and Juliet or Animal Farm produced extensive results. Aside from the almost predictable titles used in classroom instruction, there are also entries for children’s and young adult authors and their literary contributions. This provides both classroom teachers and librarians with the opportunity to extend the examination of critical reviews, author biographies, and author interviews to more advanced but often younger readers.

Both students and teachers will find that the database is easy to access and use. Like the articles, the full-text eBooks are also in HTML or PDF format, an added bonus since these titles may not be in the school library collection (or if they are, they’re in use.)

Report Card EBSCO’s Literary Reference Center is one of the top three literary databases available for high school students—it provides the best of databases and eBooks in one complete package. Many teachers will choose this product because of the eBook collection; students will appreciate accessing online reference materials from on campus or remotely. The biggest draw for most school librarians should be the full text of Bloom’s literary criticisms, short stories, poems, and classic books. This database rates an A-; points are withheld only because of the cost. This specialized database may prove too costly for school programs that don’t have strong literary research departments. But despite budget constraints, this product deserves serious consideration.