I felt a sense of calm when I saw this week's topic - Ebsco Family of databases and ebooks. I was familiar with the databases and have used them for my own research as well as with my students for some of their research projects.
The first database I used was MiddleSearch Plus. I searched for a variety of magazines my students would like to use for information: Sports Illustrated for Kids, Time for Kids, Teen Magazine. All three were in the list of publications. As I browsed I saw a number of publications that would be of interest to middles school students. Sports Illustrated for Kids had publications available from 1992 to the present time.
I decided to do a few basic searches first using the MiddleSearch Plus database and then adding an additional database, Academic Search Premier. I first searched "Zinc in Foods" in MiddleSearch Plus. I found one article from 2005 in the Saturday Evening Post. When looking in Academic Search Premier, I found several more timely articles available. The same results occurred when I searched "Holiday Traditions" in each of the databases. The Academic Search Premier database had a wide variety of publications with information my students could use for a small project they may do.
In the past my students used MiddleSearch Plus, Academic Search Premier, and Master File Premier to do research for some debating they would do in class. We had to search and I had to "play around" with the sites to become fairly comfortable, but once we got on track, we did find a wide variety of information they could use for their debate topics.
The Ebsco ebooks were new to me. When I first searched, I tried to find information on Holiday Traditions. I needed to be much more specific because the books found definitely did not fit my purpose. An advanced search helped a bit. I then looked for any titles connected to Romeo and Juliet. Multiple titles popped up. When I searched Constitution Day, I did not see many titles I felt fit the topic. I actually ended up with books telling about the constitutions of many foreign countries. My advanced search to learn about western history led me to Oklahoma history. When I first typed just Oklahoma, the titles listed were pretty varied. When I searched "Oklahoma history," the titles seemed more closely connected to the topic assigned.
I will use Ebsco host again as I have had pretty good luck finding information in the past. I especially liked that we can go online to look for magazine articles. Gone are my days of browsing the Readers' Guide to Periodicals. Wow! That was hard to use with middle schoolers! Academic Search Premier and MiddleSearch Plus are much more middle school user-friendly!
I agree with you on the middle school user-friendly. I also like the citation help. Like you, I have used this one a little bit more and felt a bit more at ease searching around.
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