e-Reference Reviews: April, 2005

-- School Library Journal, 4/1/2005

After-school Databases
Enriching Non-academic Resources for Advancement

The study of English, mathematics, science, and social studies consumes the greater part of today’s students’ time in school. There is a plethora of databases to answer every question imaginable about these core academic subjects. But what about the questions in the rest of students’ lives? What about life after and beyond school? How can students prepare for their futures? How can educators find the resources they will need for their own advancement?

Most school library media centers have a number of resources available to assist in the career planning process. Typical career-planning books cover writing résumés and cover letters, the interview process, job banks, occupational descriptions, and salaries. Keeping current on careers can be a costly endeavor for school library media center budgets. Online career information databases provide not only the latest information, but allow it to be accessed simultaneously and through remote access by faculty and students.

Databases can provide the information students and faculty will need to prepare for and advance in the workplace. Facts On File’s Ferguson’s Career Guidance Center provides a wealth of information about the most popular jobs and career opportunities for students or career changers. This value-priced database is right on target for today’s students. Gale’s Testing & Education Reference Center is the database of choice to search through thousands of colleges and scholarships, and to take practice tests for college and graduate school entrance or for licensing exams.

Effective educators are lifelong learners, thus teachers, administrators, and school library media specialists must be dedicated to a continuous plan of professional development. They must engage in an ongoing process to refine skills, inquire into practice, and develop new methods. Today’s educators are expected to understand standards and views of learning, and to change their roles and practices accordingly. To adapt to these changes, educators need to be continually supported with professional development. While free sites such as MarcoPolo (www.enc.org), and Teacher Tap (www.factsonfile.com 2005. Annual subscription price for schools starts at $575, determined by full-time enrollment. All prices are for unlimited usage and include remote-access privileges. Updated quarterly. Free trial avail. (Accessed 2/10/05).

Gr 9 Up–Comprehensive and up to date, Ferguson’s Career Guidance Center is a useful occupational-research database, drawn primarily from the Ferguson Encyclopedia of Careers and Vocational Guidance, 12th edition (the 13th edition, scheduled for publication in September 2005, will provide much new and updated content for the database) that profiles more than 2,050 of today’s jobs in more than 94 industries. FCGC also contains all the job entries from Facts On File’s 23-volume “Career Opportunities” series. Each job includes a description, skill requirements, work environment, salary ranges, employment prospects, training and education requirements, and advancement opportunities. Fully searchable and extensively hyperlinked, FCGC also contains job-specific resource listings, detailed industry descriptions, career resources, career preparation information (including scholarships, academic programs, and nonacademic programs), and Web resources. In addition, there are glossaries, directories of professional associations, and educational institutions. College and university home pages are hyperlinked and contain contact information. The database also includes a searchable archive of articles from Career Opportunities News, a bimonthly newsletter covering the most recent trends and news in the job market.

Searching is easy and the information is presented in a clear and organized framework. Simply type in the career name in “Search Careers” and then hit enter or click on “Search.” When the results appear, choose the career being researched. To learn about job paths in a specific industry, select “Industry Overviews,” scroll through the list, and select the industry of interest. To get a list of jobs available in a particular field, choose “Career Descriptions.” Users can access information through searches by industry skill, job level, education, or salary range as well as by popular government indexes such as the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. Students can search industry descriptions to find detailed information about a specific career field with links to related jobs and resources. They can also search by industry to locate a job that matches their interest and/or skill level. Those who are not planning to attend college can search for careers that do not require four-year degrees. Multiple levels of drop-down menus simplify and help focus searches and add to the database’s reference value. MLA-formatted citations are provided at the end of each article.

FCGC is the most comprehensive and authoritative career database available for today’s students. With its checklist of basic skills to assess users’ readiness to enter the workplace, Web resources, and multiple levels of searching, it is a must-purchase for school library media centers.

Professional Development Collection (PDC). EBSCO Publishing. www.galegroup.com 2005. Subscription price for K-12 schools starts at $600 for enrollment of less than 600 students. Updated monthly. Free trial avail. (Accessed 2/9/05).

Gr 7 Up–Testing & Education Reference Center, created by Thomson Gale and Thomson Peterson’s in spring 2003, is a compilation of databases and tools that helps students prepare for higher education and the world of work by providing easy access to educational institutions; scholarships; and specialized tests for colleges, graduate schools, the military, and/or trade schools. TERC also features interactive online practice tests for preparatory examinations such as entrance exams and certification and licensing tests, including ACT, CLEP, GED, GMAT CAT, GRE CAT, Test of English for International Communication (added February 2005), and the 2005 SAT (added March 2005). The new SAT practice test has sections on critical reading, math, and essay writing, as well as a vocabulary flashcard portion. Students can also practice all major college and graduate entrance exams, as well as other popular tests such as TOEFL, TOEIC, PRAXIS and those for high schools, civil service, military, and professional advancement.

The “College Search” tab on the home page allows access to two- and four-year colleges, and includes a unique program where colleges contact interested students and a “Best College Deals” section that uncovers hard-to-find financial-aid programs. The “Graduate Search” tab reveals thousands of graduate, law, MBA, and nursing opportunities. The “Specialty & Career Program Search” explores career colleges, vocational schools, Distance (online) Learning Programs, Information Technology programs, Executive Education programs, and private secondary schools, while “Test Preparation” provides preparation materials and online and eBook practice for the most popular standardized tests. In addition, 49 handbooks are available in PDF format, spanning a broad range of interests, from fire fighting and military flight aptitude tests to law school entrance exams. The extensive help section provides students with answers to just about any conceivable question.

A search for the terms “library science,” “graduate,” and “masters” returned 86 matches. The amount of information varied from minimal (most entries) to one with detailed information. Several entries included the links “E-mail the school,” “School Web site,” and “Program Description.” None of them stated whether or not the programs are accredited by the American Library Association (ALA). Once a school has been selected, users will find a general overview for that institution, costs, faculty, enrollment, scholarships, and other details.

The online practice tests and the ability to search colleges and scholarship information in one easily accessible area make TERC a valuable resource. The content (excluding online practice tests) is worth more than $2000. By providing online and remote access to users, libraries can guarantee that their patrons are using the most up-to-date tests and books available to obtain educational goals. TERC can provide students with the information they need to make intelligent decisions about their future.

Twentieth Century North American Drama (TCNAD). Alexander Street Press. sales@alexanderstreet.com Updated periodically until complete. Free trial avail. (Accessed 2/14/05).

Gr 7 Up–Alexander Street Press, in collaboration with the University of Chicago, launched Twentieth Century North American Drama in January 2005. It includes scripts of 319 plays (the June release will bring the number to 500-600) by 53 playwrights, plus selected playbills and detailed information on characters, productions, and theaters. The playwrights include familiar names like Eugene O’Neill and Thornton Wilder along with lesser-known individuals such as David Belasco, Susan Glaspell, and Marsha Norman (who won the Pulitzer for Night, Mother). The collection includes selected authors from Alexander Street’s other projects, including Black Drama, Latino Literature, Asian American Drama, and North American Women’s Drama. Twenty-five of the plays are previously unpublished, including three by Nobel laureate Eugene O’Neill. In addition, the project specifically highlights gay and lesbian, Jewish, American Indian, and other minority group theater.

At the present time this database is only partially complete. When finalized in early 2006, TCNAD will contain the full text of 1,500 plays written by more than 100 20th-century playwrights from the United States and Canada. Many of the works are rare, hard to find, or out of print. Nearly a quarter of the collection will consist of previously unpublished plays. All are full text and extensively indexed, allowing both keyword and multi-fielded searching. Reference materials and significant ancillary information (including some images) accompany the works.

The major searching options are author, plays, productions, years, characters, theaters, theatrical companies, and subjects. As with all Alexander Street Press’s databases, the search engine is amazing and powerful. The plethora of options, drop-down menus, lists, etc., provides users with numerous ways to locate information. For example, an author can be located by name and 14 other options, from year of birth to school attended to place of death. Subject headings make it possible to identify scenes and plays dealing with political and social themes, gender issues, historical events, specific organizations and individuals, cultural trends, and hundreds of other thesaurus-controlled concepts specific to this database. Extensive cross-references provide students with additional information on their search topic. MARC records for each play in the collection will be available for download in May 2005. This will allow linking directly from the OPAC to the individual item, enabling patrons to link from a public access catalog to all documents pertaining to that author.

Dealing with practical approaches to drama teaching, this database is aimed at all teachers and students, including those working toward performance. It supplies valuable support for educators by providing a detailed source for studying and teaching drama, and offers a unique window into the economic, historical, social, and political psyche of the United States and Canada during the 20th century. Students and educators who use the database will have a new way to study the events of the era–including the Great Depression, the role of women, the Cold War, and more–through the plays and performances of writers who lived through those decades.

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