Gale Virtual Reference Library

A patron asks, “What foods have zinc in them?” You scratch your head. Your reference collection is small and outdated. Where do you turn?


A student needs literary criticism of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He’s getting a late start on his project, and all the usual materials are already checked out. You go to a reference book only to discover that the desired pages have been torn out. Plus, kids really prefer online information. Where do you look?

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.
This is kind of exhausting. I looked up Education and then chose the Scholarships, Fellowships and Loans Material. From here I used library 95 hits, children's librarian 1 hit, then various forms of librarian, school library media specialist, library media specialist, etc. These were not successful.2. At the top of the 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.
Used Zinc Showing 1-20 of 405
Search within results using foods Showing 1-20 of 106
I chose Mineral Deficiency and used foods rich in zinc to receive 9 results. I use the third choice which discussed Macular Degeneration. In this article is had a long list of foods to eat in order to combat zinc deficiency.
A student needs literary criticism of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Showing 1-20 of 26
I read one and it ended with a list of sources including a url for "The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000," American Library Association.
Test the "Listen" feature.
The computer voice was pretty clear except when it would come to a red highlighted phrase. Then it was like the voice had something in her throat or a double voice was talking. I guess I just don't like computer voices.


3. Look at 2 or 3 other participants' blogs to see what they discovered. Comment if you like.
I read Hopeless and Library Challenge 2. Library Challenge 2 also did not like the listen feature.