Online Resources Part II
Jeff Price, Reference Librarian

I mentioned in the email newsletter article that knowing which database to use was half the battle to find good information. Also, its not a question of not only knowing which tool, but how to use the tool you selected. Some online sources are ebooks. (Electronic versions of reference books that the library most likely has in hard copy.) So when you look up something online using one of these tools, you can find an exact copy, words and pictures, of the information in a printed book. Examples from our collection include Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia and the Middle Ages Reference Library.

Other sources are kind of a hybrid, some information is only available online while other parts are reprinted from reference books. So these types of resources are databases which contain the articles from many different reference works. For example, the Biography Resource Center contains articles from many different types of sources that contain biographical entries. Consequently, this is a fantastic tool to start with if you are doing any research on a person, from the earliest of recorded history to the most current pop idol.

Another resource I would put in the category is the Literature Resource Center which has entries from a veritable alphabet soup of different sources. (CLC, TCLC, SC, NCLC...) All of which have reviews and criticisms from reference books online for people to access.

Our ProQuest database is very focused and contains the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times only. But there is a unique twit to this one. The default search looks at both the Times and Register going back to the mid-1980s. But if you want to go way back using the Los Angeles Times Historical Database, you need turn off searching the current articles and select specifically the historical archive, which isn't very intuitive for people use to a Google type search.

And the two most unique online resources we have which isn't geared for children are the Learning Express Test eBooks and Online Practice and the Overdrive down-loadable books, which I'll talk about next time.