Tales from the Seabury Library

Back to the books, etc.


Library's back in full swing and I've got the overflowing book return bin on Thursdays and Fridays to prove it. If the traditional book is going away, you wouldn't know it by Seabury kids.


These past couple of weeks I've been talking to the Navigators, Wildcats and Barracudas about getting King County Library cards and bringing their cards or bar code numbers to me so that I can record them. (Many of our students already have KCLS cards, so their task is just to bring the card/number to me.)


Here's the reason. And I've explained it to the students.


There are amazing resources called "databases" available on public library Web sites. Libraries purchase expensive subscriptions to these databases, but offer them free to patrons with library cards.
Tacoma Public Library System, Pierce County, Seattle – most every public and many school libraries in the country offer them, but only to those with library privileges.

I'm asking our students to get King County cards because King County has the wealthiest library system in the area and the best selection of databases. A KCLS librarian who visited us a couple of years ago said they spend more than a million dollars a year on database subscriptions. I want us to have a record of the numbers here so that we can use them freely to do research at school. I'll be teaching database use, then letting the students who have card numbers here use the library computers to access the public library when they are researching something. It will be great at some point if everyone can memorize their card numbers.

I live in Tacoma, but have cards for Tacoma, King County and Pierce County libraries. They all have reciprocal agreements, so you can get cards for all if you qualify for one. KCLS has agreements like that with many cities. And it's all free!!
Back to the databases themselves. Doing research on a database is very from different bouncing around on Google or other World Wide Web search engines (though we will work the the older students on how to do that more effectively, too). As I said, the libraries pay big bucks to subscribe to databases, with the help of our taxes. Depending on the choices made by the reference librarians at each library system, they can include encyclopedias, wonderful reference works geared toward children and adults on science, art, history, biography, geography, etc., newspaper and magazine articles, and much more. (For you adults, most libraries, including KCLS, subscribe to Consumer Reports!)

These are all book-quality reference sources and most, if not all, include citations at the end of each article that students can use .


In addition to what we do with the databases at school, they're also great resources at home and fun to explore. Check out this list of KCLS databases geared toward kids.


A few of my favorites for kids are Culturegrams, Grizimek's Animal Life, PebbleGo (animals for younger kids), Britannica Online, World Book Online, Science Online, Biography in Context  and Fiction Connection (find good books). I discover something new every time I look!


If you have any questions, feel free to email me. (beckyy@seabury.org)