Can you find important people in World Book for Kids?

Discover interesting people of the past and present with Important People feature in World Book Online for Kids!

Students Love Biography in Context

Student love Biography in Context! In a recent survey by ForeSee Results, Inc. An analysis of ForeSee survey data revealed a significant increase. High school student satisfaction increased an impressive 5 points to 76 for the period ending Nov. 2011, and college student satisfaction continues to be exceptional, scoring above 80.  Changes in satisfaction over time are very meaningful – a sustained change of 2-3 points (up or down) is statistically significant and changes greater than 5 points are considered major events.

In addition, the results show that high school student satisfaction in all measured categories – content, look and feel, navigation, search, site performance, likelihood to return and likelihood to recommend – has increased for the time period ending Nov. 2011:

• Content – 81 (+5 points)
• Look & Feel – 71 (+1 point)
• Navigation – 76 (+5 points)
• Search – 73 (+1 point)
• Site Performance – 78 (+3 points)
• Likelihood to Return – 83 (+2 points)
• Likelihood to Recommend – 71 (+3 points)

If you have not used Biography in Context, give it a try and let us know if you agree with the high school and college students surveyed.

Biographies and Memoirs Make a Comback

Once a tired boring  genre, biographies and memoirs are all the rage in the publishing industry today. Everyone from Dick Van Dyke to A-Rod to Betty White have published an eBook. Having your name in print is big, period. Even non-celebrities are getting into the biz by publishing a memoir about a great life experience. Some of these titles are even good–good enough to made into a movies. Which is the case for On the Road by Jack Kerouac, set to be released as a major motion picture later this year.

Check out some of these other biographies and memoirs today that are guaranteed to warm your soul, make your skin crawl, or inspire you to do something great!

• The Battle for Las Vegas: The Law vs The Mob by Dennis N. Griffin
• Play Like You Mean It by Rex Ryan
• Jeanne Out of the Bottle by Barbara Eden
• If You Ask Me by Betty White
• Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad

Biography in Context

Biography in Context is an online portal that directs searchers to more than 600,000 resources on more than half a million notable individuals. What sets it apart from its previous incarnation as Gale’s Biography Resource Center, and other biographical databases, is that in addition to standard resources, such as the Encyclopedia of World Biography and American History magazine, researchers are also linked to current news articles and contemporary works that reflect the evolving impact of individuals on history and popular culture. Sorted results yield not only standard references but also articles from the New York Times, People, and Entertainment Weekly; podcasts from All Things Considered and Morning Edition; advertisements; video clips; photos; and so on.

As with most Gale products, Biography in Context was designed with students in mind. Content can be accessed by searching by:

• Name
• Occupation
• Nationality
• Place of Birth
• Place of Death.

A disambiguation feature lists variations and delineates individuals with similar names to speed results and ensure accuracy. Fact boxes and general overviews are provided for some subjects, and Related Topics identify contemporaries, colleagues, or individuals of comparable achievement. Search results sort hits according to content type: reference, images, news, magazines, academic journals, audio, or whatever. Some hits are identified as Expert Picks to help students sort through choices. Students can elect to bookmark; download (either HTML or PDF); share (via Delicious, Reddit, Facebook, Diigo, StumbleUpon, etc.); cite (MLA or APA); e-mail; print; translate to another language; or save to online storage.

Researchers can be very specific (the Person Search allows limiting by occupation, nationality, ethnicity, gender, or range of birth or death dates; Advanced Search options include limiting to full-text articles or peer-reviewed journals, specific publication dates, document type, content type, content level, or even Lexile range). Searchers looking for inspiration can elect to browse selected categories (for example, Actors, Environmentalists, Inventors, LGBT Individuals, Nobel Peace Prize Winners) or people (celebrities and generally popular subjects alphabetized by their first names: Condoleezza Rice, Mark Twain, Princess Diana, etc.). The selected content is designed to support standard school assignments in addition to personal interests.

Best of all this resource along with all Gale databases the Library subscribes to are available on your iPhone!  Just download the app Access My Library.

EBSCO Databases Discontinued

This month we will be discontinuing the following EBSCO Databases:

• Nursing & Allied Health Collection
• Salud para todos
• Scientific American
• American Heritage Child Dictionary
• Kids Search
• Searchasaurs
• Student Research Center

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For replacements try using the following:

• Health Source – Nursing Edition – Search health publications geared toward the medical students or professionals. Contains a medical dictionary.
• CINAHL Plus with Full Text – CINAHL Plus with Full Text is the world’s most comprehensive source of full text for nursing & allied health journals, providing full text for more than 750 journals indexed in CINAHL. This authoritative file contains full text for many of the most used journals in the CINAHL index – with no embargo. CINAHL Plus with Full Text is the definitive research tool for all areas of nursing and allied health literature.
• Credo Reference – One stop shopping for encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri and books of quotations, not to mention a range of subject-specific titles. Be sure to try the “Concept Map”, it’s really cool!
• Kids InfoBits – Find information about animals, plants, people, geography, sports and many more subjects just for kids.
• Student Resource Center Gold – Search reference books, Magazines & Journals, Newspapers, Primary Documents, and Multimedia for subject areas History, Literature, Science, Social Science & biographies. Timeline feature.