With school back in full gear, many students and their parents are lining up at our reference desks looking for books to help with their assignments. These projects on Roman and Greek History, Countries around the World, biographies, and other topics place a limit on what the library can provide in print sources for all our patrons. Some of you might have experienced this problem.
But you are not out of luck! The Santa Clarita Public Library System subscribes to many different databases for you to use and access from the comfort of your own home or in any of our three libraries. Databases are a relatively new resource for students. Because of this, there is some confusion on what they are and why they are different from internet sources. The best way to think of a database is similar to an e-book. Documents such as books, magazine articles, and encyclopedia entries are digitized, scanned, or uploaded to the database. Sometimes books that are no longer available in print are easily accessible in a database. All the resources provided are from primary or secondary sources. It is important to understand that databases provide information from reliable and responsible sources to help you with your research. Different from sites such as Wikipedia, the information cannot be changed or edited by anyone. This ensures its reliability.
If you are interested in learned more about these resources, please feel free to ask your children’s librarian to show you how they work. You can visit our website here for more information. Also, you are all welcome to attend our “Database Smarts” presentation on Thursday, October 16th at 7:00pm at the Valencia Library Branch.
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