Educators' Reference Complete Demo

Midwest Collaborative for Library Services, MeL Training Materials

reviewed 7/09 SR

We obviously do not expect elementary and middle school students to use this, but it is a valuable resource for teachers, librarians, and parents, so we want to at least raise awareness of what is available.

Have the class go to mel.org and find Educator's Reference Complete in the list and open it.

It uses the familiar PowerSearch platform, so you can do this as a demonstration if you don't have time to have the class follow along.

Type reading comprehension in the box and do the search. Point out that the Academic Journals tab is is front, the other tabs indicate how many items are available for each format.

A valuable feature of this database is Browse Publications found as a link at the top of the page. Click on that, then type reading in the box and do the search. Point out the the results list shows all the periodicals that include the word reading in the title. Click on Reading Teacher. Point out that the most recent issues are listed and are live links, PLUS there is a drop-down menu to change to a different year and retrieve all those issues. Change the year to 2005 to view the issues from back then.

Teachers and librarians will enjoy this feature when someone remembers reading an article but can't remember when it was published.

No exercises for this one.