Best Practices

Outstanding Reference Materials for Students
By Peggy Steffens

Beth Malapanes, CDO Librarian, recently taught a District Technology Class about the powerful research tools available for students and teachers at the Tucson-Pima Public Library (TPPL) website.  All you need is a library card and you have access to a multitude of resources.

Simply go to the TPPL library page at http://www.lib.ci.tucson.az.us/

You and your students will then have access to articles from newspapers or magazines like Ebsco Host, StarNet, ProQuest Newspapers, First Search and more.  By entering your library card information you will be able to search the archives for the articles you need for your research.  In addition to newspapers and magazines, there are databases for health, business, art, legal issues, and more. Teachers will want to pay particular attention to CultureGrams. CultureGrams has a World Edition, Kids Edition, States Edition, Photo Gallery, Famous People Index and Recipe Collection.

• The World Edition provides information and resources written for students on 187 countries and includes maps, statistics, and in-depth information in 25 categories.
• The Kids Edition is written for younger students and provides information on 68 countries including geographical information, flags, history, maps and images. 
• The States Edition contains facts, symbols, timelines and information about the 50 United States and District of Columbia.
• The Photo Gallery has over 600 images of the people, culture and life from 50 countries.
• The Famous People Index offers short biographies on the countries’ best known individuals.
• The Recipe Collection features five native recipes from each of the countries featured in CultureGrams.

The TPPL has other wonderful resources you can take advantage of including audio books you can checkout or download to a computer.  They offer tools to help your students find the next book to read based on the type of genre they like to read.  Be sure to sign up for the next class Beth offers on the resources at the TPPL.