Gale Virtual Reference is definitly a plus since I'm not ordering very many reference books
since everything is on line now and they do take up a huge amount of space. Really liked the
show all feature which lets you see the collection a a glance.
I chose Literary Themes for Students: The American Dream and from the Table of Contents
chose The Great Gatsby. Lots of information and very easy to understand, espcially for older
students. Liked the Historical Overview. Good source for teachers preparing to teach this
book.
Did a basic search on Swine Flu and pulled up 5 sources. Chose Gale Encyclopedia of
Science and found a very brief article. It was good but would probably need a little more in
depth info. Did like the Source Citation at the end of the article for Juniors learning how to
cite sources. The "Read to Me" feature is probably not key with high school students but is
interesting.
Thanks for your observations, Superreader. We think Gale is easy to use and has a broad range of topics for high school through adult. Your swine flu search intrigued me, so I had to try it myself. As another participant pointed out, most of the online reference books in GVRL are not up-to-the-minute, and most of the sources were published before the most recent big swine flu scare. FYI, the most used book in SD is the Endangered Species, and I know one school who used GVRL for students' reports on chemical elements. We think there's a lot of good science, literature, and business information here. The Read to Me is valuable for learning to pronounce difficult words (esp. medical & scientific terms) and for those with vision impairments and reading disabilities. We hope GVRL can help fill gaps in library's reference collections, as those books become more & more expensive.
ReplyDelete