We welcomed Mrs. Gioseffi’s AP World History 9 classes to the library this week for in-depth explorations of topics in world history, 1450-1750.

The main focus of our time in the library is to be aware of and use many different types of resources. Information comes from other people (ideally, people who know more about topic than we do), and there are many different ways to get information from people who have it (them) to people who want it (us).

We started with ABC-CLIO, a history database available through the Academy Library Find Articles page, that includes basic reference articles and in-depth explorations of hundreds of topics in Global and U.S. History. Use your last name and student ID number to log in.

We also recognized books as one of the most useful sources for in-depth analysis of topics. Not only do y0u have access to the Academy Library collection catalog, you can use FLCC’s library and Wood Library, with catalogs available on the Find Books and Video page.

And if that’s not enough, you can also check the W-FL BOCES Union Catalog to see what other school libraries have that you could borrow. Check the Union Catalogs page for the links and ask Mr. Bateman about doing an Interlibrary Loan.

Magazines and academic journals are also great sources of information. Rather than keeping hundreds of copies of old magazines around, we can access the information using Periodical Databases, also available via the Academy Library Find Articles page. We used ProQuest in class, but you can also use EBSCOhost — remember to use the Advanced Search options to help narrow your results to articles that are relevant to what you need.

We also took a look at what we can find for free online, using search engines effectively. Out of 25 billion web pages indexed by Google, we were able to narrow our search results to a tiny fraction of that by using some of the options available on the Google Advanced Search page. Phrasing was one strategy; limiting search results to sites hosted by colleges and universities using the .edu suffix was another. The bottom line — be specific, and trust your source!

Also available on the Academy Library Find Articles page are a few sources for finding media:

• Discovery Streaming (use the username and password on the Find Articles page)
• WXXI’s EdVideo Online (set up your account using the student passcode)
• CA Library Custom Video Search (available on this blog under the heading ‘Custom Searches’)
• Annenberg Media — free video! Woohoo!

Hopefully this overview will help you remember and guide you to some of the wide variety of sources that are out there to help you develop your essay!