ER Challenge: Week 4 GVRL

1. UXL Encyclopedia of Mythology - would've been so nice to have had this as a resource in the library days. The library owned a one-volume mythology encyclopedia, heavily used by students, to the point that the binding gave out. Such an expensive tool to replace that I had it rebound, resulting in an unsatisfactory product because text closest to the spine "got lost" in the new binding. Another + with the UXL product is the copyright date, 2009, far more recent than what I had on the shelf. I looked up Zeus, found an excellent, clearly-written discussion with at least one illustration of a seated Zeus in vol. 5 of the 5-volume set. My library could've never afforded a 5-volume set on mythology.
The read-aloud capability is particularly nice in this resource because mythology research was usually a required topic for 9-grade English, also required. Some grade 9 research students would definitely derive more from the text if it were read aloud to them.


Access to Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World would've been helpful during the post-9/11/01 reaction when students were curious about the religion, but adult patrons (including some school board members) didn't want anything that had to do with Islam and Muslims on the library shelves. Copyright date of 2004 isn't too bad. This is a 2-volume set; most school libraries couldn't justify the cost and would have to rely upon the discussion of Islam in sources that discussed it as one of many religions (as we did).

Also appreciated the 2006 cr date of Extremist Groups: Information for Students. Always a topic of high interest to students, hard to keep current info on the shelves, and we all know kids prefer to find this kind of info electronically anyway. Better this kind of resource than a Google search.

2. Found the answer to the zinc question (lamb, beef, leafy grains, root veggies . . .) in the discussion of Minerals in Gale Encyclopedia of Children's Health. Highlighted just that paragraph, clicked ReadSpeak and heard just that paragraph read aloud, clearly and at a good rate for listening. Five articles came up as a result of my basic search, but just this one yielded the info I'd requested--perhaps I didn't dig deeply enough in the others. Three of the others were in Gale Enc. of Medicine, one in Gale Enc. of Cancer.

Found critical discussions of Huck Finn in a couple places, Literary Themes for Students: Race & Prejudice, and Literature and Its Times: 300 Notable Literary Works . . . These were results from a basic search of the title plus the term "literary criticism" and then use of the ebook index for each book. There were 3 discussions of the book in Literary Themes . . ., with the first listed in the index being the most complete discussion and containing links to both "Critical Overview" and "Criticism" sections. Voila--literary criticism on the fly for the procrastinating student and many thanks to the savvy librarian, no doubt.