MMI 10

Ebsco Host
I decided to use Primary Search.  I did find Highlights, Zoobooks, Ranger Rick, American Girl, Cricket, and Ladybug in the publications list.  The only one I tried and didn’t find was Family Fun but my guess is that it is somewhere else, not in Primary Search.  We happen to have it in the Children’s Room so that’s why I tried it out.  I was amazed at the people whose biographies were included.  I wanted to see what information was available on the folks so I chose one and brought it up.  Seeing an audio button I was pleased to see that the article could be listened to as well as read.  Looking up the subject Christian Science I found that article to be above and beyond an elementary school child’s ability.  It was in Mary Baker’s words and I think that the concepts she shared would be a huge challenge for an elementary student.  However, through looking that up I realized that there are articles and excerpts from writings as well as magazines and specific biographical information provided by Great Neck Publishing who seemed to have written every biography I looked at.  I did take the time to look at several other folk’s postings.  No one else had looked at Primary Search.  I would have liked to been able to compare other youth librarians comments if they had used PS.  Makes me wonder if it would be good to try and do something specifically for the Youth Services librarians so they’ll know what’s available.  Think I’ll ask the librarians in our local schools just how they use these databases.

Ebsco eBooks

I decided to look at the Children’s and Young Adult Non-fiction offerings.  Oh, my, how sad.  There were only 21 books listed and all but one of them was published in 1999.  The other one was a 2000 copyright.  That makes this database quite dated and of little help in research for the age group.  Even sadder to say is that the C&YA fiction section had only 2 books listed, one from 1998 and one from 1999.  It is quite evident that this resource for children might as well be nonexistent.

Constitution Day wasn’t a particular good search for me.  Found info on other countries.  Did read Feel the Learn’s suggestion to use a visual search and it was good to play with that again.  Need to remember I can do that with future searches. 

When I searched Oklahoma I only found a few results.  I noticed that the publication dates are really limited, from 1998 to 2000.  When I tried to change publication dates I couldn’t.  I then went poking around on the different categories listed on the left and saw that some of them are extremely limited as to the years they cover.  I was pleased to see that the health one went to 2012.  This was frustrating to me and I quickly gave up looking.