Group #6 Reference Sources

Our group six topic is on the link Reference Sources. “This is a great way to look up quick facts, definitions, statistics and overviews using online dictionaries, encyclopedias, directories and etc.” http://lrts.stcloudstate.edu/library/research/default.asp 2/22/2011 This is also a good way to look for a topic that you might find interesting. They’re very good about having information on many different/ controversial topics. Here are some of the tools that this link provides.
Credo Reference
CQ Researcher
Discovering Collection
Educator’s Reference Complete
Facts of File (World News Digest)
Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center
MasterFILE Premier
Points of View Reference Center
Sage Reference Online
Science Reference Collection


Clearly there is a lot of resources here that you could use as a valuable tool to aid you in writing a paper or whatever the case maybe. We’re going to zoom in on just two of these resources and explain them in depth, what they can be used for, and how to use them. We’ll talk about the Discovering Collection Link and the Facts of File (World News Digest).


"Discovery Collection: A good resource for very basic information on virtually any topic. This comprehensive reference resource includes essays, critical analyses, biographies, and primary sources in both text and multimedia."
Different things it can do:)
1- Popular topics
2- Different subjects
3- Publication searches
4- Advanced searches
With just putting in key words you are able to pull up many different passages and in those passages the key word is highlighted.
The databases selected for searching offer a combined 281,559 articles and were last updated as recently as February 22, 2011
http://find.galegroup.com/srcx/dispBasicSearch.do?prodId=DC&userGroupName=stcloud_main

Now I’m going to talk about the Facts on File (World News Digest) reference site. This is a searchable news and events site in addition to using the encyclopedia and almanac. This site gives top stories that date all the way back to 1940. Some special features that this resource has maps, photographs, historic documents, and overviews of key issues. Basically you can just type the topic you’re interested in and if available there will be articles related to that topic. Right on the front page they have a in-depth coverage, Special Features, and Research Topic Idea Categories which are both useful and interesting.
The URL to this site is http://www.2facts.com/wnd_home_feature.aspx