This webazine will be published quarterly by NISD Library Services to highlight various online databases to which the district subscribes.  There is a core collection for grades K-12 which will always be linked in the margin of this webazine.  Many campuses have additional subscriptions to meet specific campus needs but those will not be highlighted in this publication.  For our first issue we wanted to go into a little more detail about each database.  Within the district no passwords are required for most of them.  For “at home” use they will all require logins and passwords, which can be obtained from each campus librarian.  If you are a district employee not connected to a specific campus, you may obtain the logins and passwords from Library Services (397-8190).

• EBSCO Host
  Periodicals, books, newspapers, medical resources, professional journals, images, Lexile reading levels and translation function for many articles
• Enciclopedia Universal en Espanol
  Spanish encyclopedia provided by Britannica
• Encyclopedia Britannica Online
  Encyclopedias, images, web links, etc.
• Facts on File
  Diagrams, reference materials, maps, etc.
• TeachingBooks.net
  Authors and books, web links
• Thomson Gale
  Newspapers, periodicals, reference books, multimedia, Lexile reading levels and translation function for many articles
• United Streaming (not available for student home use)
  Videos, images, and teacher resources 
• Visual Thesaurus
  Interactive dictionary and thesaurus
• WebCat
  Northside Library Catalog
• World Book Online
  Encyclopedia, web links, Spanish Encyclopedia

If you are a parent you might find some of these of particular interest:

• Personal and Business Forms  Provides printable forms for a wide range of personal, business, and government categories, including individual income taxes.
• Health Reference Center  Provides clear and comprehensive information on conditions and diseases, health and wellness, mental health, etc.

• Consumer Health Complete  Provides convenient access to easily understandable health and medical information. Consumers can search and browse within medical encyclopedias, popular reference books, and magazine articles.

If you are a college student you might find some of these of particular interest: 

• Academic Search Complete  Designed specifically for academic institutions, contains comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text resources, with more than 5,300 full-text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed journals.
• ERIC  Educational Resource Information Center contains more than 2,200 digests along with references for additional information and citations and abstracts from over 1,000 educational and education-related journals.
• Thomson Gale Professional Collection A custom set of journals for today’s professional educator.

En español:

• Fuente Académica  Provides full text (including PDF) for 260 scholarly Spanish language journals. This multi-disciplinary database offers full text content to many academic areas including business & economics, medical sciences, political science, law, computer science, library & information sciences, literature, linguistics, history, philosophy and theology.  
• MedicLatina  Provides a Spanish language collection of medical research and investigative journals published by renowned Latin American medical publishers.
• Enciclopedia Estudiantil Hallazgos Spanish Student Discovery Encyclopedia is organized so that the student can find information quickly and easily.

We hope you will share successful and interesting database experiences with us for future webazine articles.  Enjoy!

Title III Parent Conference

The Title III Parent Conference was held on Saturday, October 20, 2007 from 8:00 – 3:00 at the Northside Activity Center.  The conference began with a Welcome Breakfast and talk by Sandra Martinez, Bilingual/English as a Second Language Family Specialist.  Northside bilingual and ESL parents were invited to attend sessions on various topics of interest. 

Elma Gloria, librarian at Burke Elementary School, presented three sessions on the district-wide online databases.  The first session was in Spanish and the other two were conducted in English.  Ms. Gloria began by showing parents how to access the databases that are available to them and their children through the NISD homepage and/or their child’s library webpage.  Each database was explored and topics were searched. 

The parents were particularly excited about two of our Spanish language databases, the Enciclopedia Universal en Español and Enciclopedia de Estudiantil Hallazgos.  Each family was given a copy of a home-use database card listing all of the databases with logins and passwords.  Two laptop computers were available so that the families could go and explore the databases for themselves. 

New High School Opening in 2010 

One NISD middle school student, who will be an entering freshman at the new high school on Potranco West opening in 2010, will get the exciting honor of naming it. Students research Supreme Court Justices (PBS Online) and develop rationale for the particular name they submit to the Board of Trustees, who make the final decision.

Students at Luna Middle School are using Facts on File and other district-wide databases to do their research for Northside’s 11^th comprehensive high school.  Facts on File has a feature which allows for a federated search, a tool that groups its multiple history databases together and searches them simultaneously.

If you would like to do some research on Supreme Court Justices yourself to experience the many online resources available to students, families, and employees, please contact your student’s campus library or Library Services (397-8190) to receive the required login and password.

During elementary Early Release days, librarians are invited to spend the afternoon at Northside Learning Center to create library unit/lesson plans with a science theme.

On October 12, 2007, thirty one elementary librarians began the task of creating science lessons based on the NISD Science curriculum, incorporating library research and resources wherever possible.  Facts on File, one of our district databases contains Curriculum Resource Center Junior Edition with many science diagrams.  These are especially helpful in teaching students to discriminate details they see in a diagram and interpret their findings, a typical question type found on the TAKS test.

Librarians will continue meeting on Early Release days.  The lessons, when completed, will be posted in the district Curriculum Management System.

Leadership Triads of campus administrators, CITs, and librarians participated in a digital age “think tank” to explore selected content area TEKS with a technology twist!  Six elementary sessions were held in September, two middle school and one high school session were held in early October. 

The Triads were given a newspaper article describing an oil spill on the Texas Gulf coast.  The article and corresponding research links were from NISD databases.  Class Blogmeister, a district approved blogging tool, incorporated the research links and provided a way for the participants to respond to questions and participants expressed many ideas for ways to use this Web2.0 tool at their campuses!

Jefferson Middle School

Jefferson Middle School faculty were recently invited to dip into a sampling of delicious new ways to integrate district-wide online databases with the NISD curriculum.  Monday, October 8 was a staff development day and in the afternoon Jefferson librarian, Lucy Podmore, held three training sessions in a computer lab. 

Each 45-minute session was designed around a particular grade level curriculum.  Sixth grade teachers were shown an upcoming unit, the Solar System, and how to find information in Facts on File and EBSCOhost databases.  Seventh grade teachers were shown an upcoming unit, Catastrophic Events, and how to find information in Thomson Gale and EBSCOhost databases.  Finally, eighth grade teachers explored Thomson Gale and World Book Online Advanced to find information for their upcoming unit, Weather and the Greenhouse Effect.  All sessions included an activity which introduced the newest database, Visual Thesaurus. 

The Jefferson faculty enjoyed having the time to investigate the databases. They also loved the dips and chips provided for a snack!