Lesson 6: Gale Virtual Reference Library

1. Getting to know the titles in GVRL is similar to getting to know the titles of your library's reference collection. Click "Title List" on the upper right to view all the titles available in the collection. Click a book title of interest to you and access an article via the table of contents. Notice with the multi-volume titles, you can select which volume you look at. Discuss the title you selected and how you may use it. 

I chose the Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of Foods and Recipes of the World. I then chose to look up Germany. I found that this not only lists several traditional German recipes, but also listed information about the country. This could be very helpful to a student researching Germany, or to anyone that is interested in traditional recipes from their families home country.

2. At the top of the home page, type a search term in the search box. Search for answers to the two questions posed at the beginning of the post: zinc or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn if you can't think of something else. Review the results, selecting an article to see what kind of information you can find. Test the "Listen" feature. Discuss your results. 

I looked up The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and found 94 results. These results listed every article in every reference book that GVRL has. I then chose the Literary Themes for Students: Race and Prejudice and clicked on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This gave me an overview of the book and the author. When listening you can either download the audio to listen to later, or you can listen while reading. There is an option of having your words or sentences highlighted in different colors as they are read. 

3. Look at 2 or 3 other participants' blogs to see what they discovered. Comment if you like.