South Dakota Library Challenge, Lesson 1

I actually originally started this blog to talk about my artwork, but somehow that never happened! I've been far too busy to make any decent art lately, so I guess I had nothing to comment on. Now I've accepted the South Dakota State Library's Library Challenge, and will be using this blog to discuss what I've learned.

Lesson 1a--World Book school edition
I tried the different sections of the World Book school edition. First, I looked up guinea pigs in the World Book Kids. (Can't help it, I love guinea pigs.) There was a picture of guinea pigs, and a short informative article. The article gave the basics about guinea pigs, mostly focusing on domestic guinea pigs and describing how people keep them as pets. The article did mention that guinea pigs are also found in the wild.
In the World Book Student section, I also searched guinea pigs. It came up with the same photo, but the article was quite a bit longer. It gave much more detail about care and breeding....this would be very useful for someone considering getting one as a pet. It also mentioned that they are sometimes hunted in the wild for food, and that they are commonly used in research. I am wondering if this was left out in the younger kids' version for fear it might be upsetting to small children, or if it was just to save space because it was not considered essential information. Anyway, a nice long article with lots of good information.
In the World Book Advanced section, I searched for information about Australia. This search revealed an enormous amount of information. World Book sorts it all out kindly for the researcher. On the left, it listed different sources of information such as encyclopedia articles, e-books, maps, tables, sounds, videos, reports, research guides and web sites. This enables you to choose a certain type of information. On the right it listed primary sources. The center was a long article that can be printed, e-mailed or saved. When I clicked to the Australia page, it had articles broken down in sections: intro, people, ways of life, the arts, the land, climate, animals & plants, and economy. This would be excellent for someone writing a research paper...you could focus on a specific area of study, and even pick and choose the types of sources you would like to use. A very valuable resource.
In World Book Discover, I looked up American Government. There were plenty of articles to choose from, and for non-english speakers, there is even a translate option with many languages to choose from.