Monday, February 23, 2009

Gale Virtual Reference Library

Gale Virtual Reference Library is amazing....so many topics....so many articles.
I did a basic search for Africa, and within Africa I searched for Rwanda, and chose genocide in Rwanda. I like that there are illustrations included with the text (although genocide pictures were disturbing).

I searched for U.S. Presidents. In experimenting with the keywords....when I left out the periods after U and S, I got one hit. When I left out the period after the S, I got no hits. When including both periods, I got a list of 72 books. Another time, entering keywords in exactly the same way, I got a list of 69 books (where did the 3 books go?). I thought it was interesting to see what results I would get by entering the keywords in a variety of ways.....guess I'm crazy like that. :)

I first searched Horizon for VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever, and then went to Gale Virtual Reference Library, where I typed in the VideoHound's title. When I got no results, I clicked on the topic "Art", and found VideoHound's listed alphabetically. The Table of Contents gives a complete picture of this e-book, and I found the Website Guide to be a valuable tool, as well. Still, I prefer VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever in paper format...but then, that's just me. I love browsing through a book, where I feel that all the movies are literally at my fingertips. I enjoyed reading the rating scale "bones". It's a user friendly and fun rating system. What a treasure is this complete guide, in either format!

Friday, February 6, 2009