South Dakota Library Challenge Lesson 4

For lesson 4, we are testing out Gale Virtual Reference Library. This resource has tons of great titles to browse. I chose "American Civil War Reference Library" from the list of available titles. This is basically an electronic version of a book. When I clicked on table of contents, it listed the individual chapters so I could choose one that looked interesting. First I clicked on "Civil War Timeline". This was a fantastic thing...it listed in order every single event of significance about the Civil War, including events leading up to and after the war. This would be very helpful if a student wanted to write a paper about the Civil War and was having trouble narrowing the subject down. In the chapter listing, there were also individual chapters on people who were influential in the war. I chose to look up Clara Barton. There was a really good biography of her, and on the left side were related searches listed to get more information. There were also citations provided for students writing papers, as well as links to other articles and a list of other books to get more information. This resource would be fantastic for students writing papers, or even someone just looking for a quick answer to a question such as "When was the Gettysburg Address delivered?"
For the next part of the exercise I used the "Basic Search" option at the top to look up information on Leonardo Da Vinci. I got a long list of articles about him. The great thing about this is that they were divided up into subjects, so I could choose which ones were relevant without having to look at each one individually. (Since Da Vinci was known as both artist and scientist, there was a wide variety of articles). This would be a good resource for looking up almost anything. If enough information is not found in the initial article, there are always links to more information.