1b. Find Background Information

Full text for each record may be easily accessed by double-clicking on the topic from the display. The database contains various images and offers brief biographies as well as information in a variety of subject areas. This database is updated annually.

As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from dictionaries of current English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings. You’ll still find present-day meanings in the OED, but you’ll also find the history of individual words, and of the language—traced through three million quotations, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books.

A majority of the full-text legal reference books are provided through Nolo, the nation’s oldest and most respected provider of legal information for consumers and small businesses. This database will offer the everyday user the necessary tools and detailed ‘how-to’ instructions to independently address a wide range of legal issues including business law, financial planning, family law, property & real estate, and rights & disputes.

The database contains nearly 400 full-text periodicals and over 450 full-text reference books. The user-friendly interface guides through small business and entrepreneurial subject areas, common business types, and a help-and-advice section, and it provides information on how to create business plans that lead to successful funding. Business videos provide critical information for business owners: Interviews, ‘lessons-learned’ features, lectures, and ‘how-to’ videos help foster success in all aspects of managing a business. A collection of state-specific resources supports the researcher with demographic data and other local information. The Small Business Reference Center is updated daily.

The resource provides researchers with unbounding literary resources to support their literary responses, literary analysis, and thesis statements through a diversity of scholars and critics that ensure all views and interpretations are represented.

Researchers can find up-to-date analysis, biographical information, overviews, full-text literary criticism, and reviews on more than 130,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods, and from around the world. Gale Literature Resource Center brings together materials that support interdisciplinary approaches, information literacy, and the development of critical-thinking skills. Researchers with a literature, history, arts, gender-studies, or cultural-studies focus can use this resource to analyze authors and works throughout time.

This multifaceted database incorporates information from major respected reference works, books, and literary journals as well as proprietary content from EBSCO Publishing, and includes hundreds of thousands of full-text poems and tens of thousands of short stories ranging in period from antiquity to the present. The most studied poems are supplemented with indexing covering subject, poetic forms, poetic themes, techniques, and literary periods, schools, and movements.

Designed for an audience ranging from novice test consumers to experienced professionals, the MMY series contains information essential for a complete evaluation of test products within such diverse areas as psychology, education, business, and leadership. All MMY entries contain descriptive information (e.g., test purpose, publisher, pricing) and edited review(s) written by leading content area experts. To be included in the MMY, a test must be commercially available, be published in the English language, and be new or revised since it last appeared in the series. First published by Oscar K. Buros, the MMY series allows users to make knowledgeable judgments and informed selection decisions about the increasingly complex world of testing.

Also produced by the Buros Center for Testing at the University of Nebraska, Tests in Print (TIP) serves as a comprehensive bibliography to all known commercially available tests that are currently in print in the English language. TIP provides vital information to users including test purpose, test publisher, in-print status, price, test acronym, intended test population, administration times, publication date(s), and test author(s).

Including full text for more than 740 magazines and books as well as access to more than 720 videos and over 140 hobby reports, this database offers detailed ‘how-to’ instructions and creative ideas to meet the interests of virtually every hobby enthusiast. Subject areas include arts & crafts; collecting; games & electronics; model building; home & leisure; needlework; outdoors & nature; and scrapbooking & papercraft. The database also features extensive information on over 140 topics. Hobbies & Crafts Reference Center provides full text from the leading hobby and craft magazines, including Bead & Button, Birder’s World, Creative Knitting, FineScale Modeler, PaperWorks, Scrapbooking, Quilter’s World, and many more.

The main navigation will direct researchers to high-quality repair information. Thousands of repairs will be available in the areas of outdoor projects, electrical projects, remodeling projects, plumbing projects, wood projects, decorating projects, and maintenance. In addition to the repair information, other magazines and reference books focusing on home improvement will be included in the database. The intent of this new product is to provide full-text articles that show instructions, tips, and suggestions for a variety of home-improvement projects.

MAS Complete also provides more than 440 full-text reference books, 85,670 biographies, 105,786 primary-source documents, and an image collection of over 502,000 photos, maps, and flags, color PDFs, and expanded full-text backfiles (back to 1975) for key magazines.

Topics include biography, history, careers, language arts, literature, government, health, math, science, current events, and social–emotional health.

This database also contains full text for nearly 500 reference books and over 164,400 primary source documents, as well as an image collection of over 502,000 photos, maps, & flags. MasterFILE Premier offers PDF backfiles (as far back as 1975) for key publications including American Libraries, Foreign Affairs, History Today, Judaism, Library Journal, National Review, Saturday Evening Post, etc.

Topics include biography, history, careers, cooking, literature, genealogy, health, parenting, personal finance, politics, architecture, science, current events, social–emotional health, sports, and travel.