Thing 16 - Reference and Research Tools

InfoTrac Junior Edition and InfoTrac Student Edition (Middle/High School level)

a) appropriateness-the results were suitable for this age level.
b) usability - the information was simple to find and the databases were very easy to use.
c) content - there was a lot of pertinent information. I searched for charter schools and there were more results in the student edition database vs the junior edition. Although, there was suitable content in books, journals and news in both editions.
d) credibility - all the information was credible, reliable and valid.

 General One File

a) appropriateness - I didn't feel the results were appropriate for a middle school or young high school level. They would be more appropriate for higher level high school students or college level. I searched charter schools and did not get any results which I thought was strange. I then searched for social networking. The results were about articles in New Dehli and Kenya. I would need to narrow my search string to get more appropriate results.
b) usability - similar to InfoTrac. Typing in the keywords, titles or documents makes it quite simple.
c) content - I was not satisfied with the results because by just searching social networking, there were 16683 results and none of the top twenty that were displayed mentioned Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. Searching on google resulted in "About 382,000,000 results" but the main results were about Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and MySpace.
d) credibility - the results in the General One File seemed to be credible, reliable and valid.

 MEL Database Citations 

 FREE Citation Maker  

Buckley, J., & Schneider, M. (2007). Charter schools: Hope or hype?. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.