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Upcoming Downtime for U.S. Newsstream January 19, 2019

Wednesday, January 2, 2019

To maintain the currency and security of ProQuest products, the vendor is performing maintenance on many products beginning on January 19, 2019. During the maintenance window U.S. Newsstream will be temporarily unavailable. The downtime is scheduled for Saturday, January 19, 2019 at 9:00 pm Central Time. Maintenance will conclude within 8 hours. 

We apologize for any inconvenience. 

Improved Collections Development with Core Collections Complete!

Thursday, December 13, 2018

For educators or librarians looking to search across all three Core Collections databases at once, we now offer the Core Collections Complete; an excellent collection development, curriculum support, readers' advisory, and reference resource. This interface makes it easy to browse award-winning books, get ideas for book displays and book lists, and see a title's recommendation. View featured books, locate similar titles, and read reviews!

We hope this interface simplifies your library's collection development for preschool through high school readers. 

Reach out if you have any questions!        

Newspapers.com Library Edition - World Collection now available

Monday, October 29, 2018

The BadgerLink Team is pleased to announce the availability of Newspapers.com Library Edition - World Collection!

Wisconsin residents now have access to historical newspapers from the 1700s - 2000s. Newspapers.com contains thousands of well-known regional, state, and small local newspapers in the United States and other countries. There are 150 Wisconsin-specific titles including the Janesville Daily Gazette, the Racine Daily Herald, the Eau Claire Leader, and many more. New content is continually added as it becomes available.

Newspapers.com allows users to browse and read historic newspaper content directly from their web browser or mobile device as well as save or print clippings. Newspaper content is presented in its original form, so overall context is preserved. All the pages on Newspapers.com have been indexed using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) which allows users to search for specific names and keywords across all available papers.

Newspapers.com joins the Archive of Wisconsin Newspapers and U.S. Newsstream to provide Wisconsin residents with a robust collection of newspaper content, both current and historic. Take a look at our Wisconsin Newspapers in BadgerLink Title List for a complete listing of Wisconsin newspapers available in BadgerLink.

Want to share how you research with EBSCO?

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

Do you use EBSCOhost resources and want to give them feedback on their databases?

Then EBSCObeta is the tool for you! EBSCObeta allows EBSCO to gain greater knowledge about how users search, and how they interact with content and tools. EBSCO will then incorporate what they find into improvements of their platform and products. A link to EBSCObeta will appear on the Science Reference Center home page in the Featured Science Topic box. Anyone can offer feedback-- librarians, patrons, and users of all ages.

So next time you are using Science Reference Center through BadgerLink, check out the site, found in the right side margin on the main search page (screenshot below). Take notes about the experience, and share insights via their user survey in EBSCObeta’s top toolbar.

picture of EBSCObeta on Science Reference Center home page Accessing EBSCObeta from Science Reference Center home page

 

U.S. Newsstream Now Available!

Friday, October 5, 2018

U.S. Newsstream contains current and archival United States news coverage dating back to the 1980s. This new-to-BadgerLink resource features key national and regional sources including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Newsday, Chicago Tribune and over 80 Gannett titles like the Appleton Post-Crescent and the Green Bay Press Gazette. Content is updated daily, with same-day publication access to over 250 titles. U.S. Newsstream includes newswires, news journals, television and radio transcripts, blogs, podcasts, and digital-only websites.

To get started researching in U.S. Newsstream access at https://badgerlink.dpi.wi.gov/resource/us-newsstream and learn more with ProQuest’s Libguide at http://proquest.libguides.com/newsstream/about.

Bonus! See Wisconsin Newspapers in BadgerLink for titles included in Archive of Wisconsin Newspapers, Newspapers.com Library Edition World Collection (forthcoming), and U.S. Newsstream.

Teachers and professors recommend (newspaper research).  According to a recent ProQuest survey, (88%) of researchers who also teach recommend newspapers to their students, indicating the value of newspapers for all levels of research. *

Broaden your scope for insight and understanding. News content provides critical context to broaden researchers' scope for insight and learning. Issues and events can be examined within the framework of concurrent issues and events as they unfold.*

*From  U.S. Newsstream promotional material

Science Reference Center

Thursday, February 1, 2018

Science Reference Center, BadgerLink's premier STEM resource for students, educators and librarians, is chock full of full-text reference books, images and magazines.  Over the years we've heard many of you comment on its usefulness teaching not only key topics but the research skills needed to succeed in college and beyond. 

As Arlen Kimmelman, School Librarian and Techbrarian at Clearview Regional High School in New Jersey, writes in her EBSCOpost blog article Sprouting Good Habits with Science Reference Center, this database is key for teaching information literacy and critical thinking skills.  According to one of her students, "Googling can give you thousands of websites to use as a source, but they aren't always reliable, and it's hard to narrow them down using Google.  Using the databases helps us find good sources that support our research instead of finding a weird and random website with something that could be completely made up." 

Read Arlen's article and find more supplemental tools about Science Reference Center on the BadgerLink website at https://badgerlink.dpi.wi.gov/resource/science-reference-center, including a Scavenger Hunt and Educator Resources.

Diverse Books with TeachingBooks.net

Thursday, January 11, 2018

A fantastic BadgerLink resource to help readers connect deeply with books is TeachingBooks.net. Their mission is to equitably give all readers insights and opportunities that deepen their understanding and joy of the books they are reading. Part of this mission is to provide educational digital resources for quality fiction and nonfiction books that bring culture and race to the forefront of literary conversations with authentic, primary source instructional materials.

TeachingBooks.net includes resources that represent diverse cultural experiences as reflected in quality fiction and nonfiction books.

For example you can:

Sample Resources include:

 

For more information about using BadgerLink to find diverse books, check out our blog from last month where we shared some strategies for using NoveList and NoveList K-8: Diverse Books and BadgerLink.

Diverse Books and BadgerLink

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

kids of all colors

As discussions about personalized learning and equity become more prevalent in education, librarians are reminded to consider the inclusivity of their collections. As you consider adding diverse selections, BadgerLink is a fabulous tool for selecting new titles.

NoveList and NoveList K-8

NoveList and NoveList K-8 are fiction recommendation resources. You can search by keyword, terms of appeal, reading level, author’s cultural identity, as well as books with diverse characters.

Using the Advanced Search feature in NoveList or NoveList K-8 you can search by subject, genre, or appeal factor. Here are some search examples of things you can find.

Is one of your library users looking for a book about friendship that have characters with a variety of abilities?

 Appeal Factor ability diverse, Subject friendship

What if your patron comes in asking for a book featuring someone with Down syndrome?

 Subject down syndrome, Subject friendship

Maybe your book club is looking for a great book to discuss at your next meeting. A search for culturally diverse and character driven will give your book club plenty to talk about!

 Appeal Factors culturally diverse, Appeal Factors character,driven

Looking for books with African American characters for your story time? Try this search.

 Subject african american, Genre picture books

Try mixing and matching these search terms:

SU Subject

  • Multiracial

  • African American

  • Asian American

  • Autism

  • Learning Disabilities

  • Jewish Americans

  • Interfaith families

  • Interethnic relations

GN Genre

  • LGBTQIA fiction

  • Multicultural romances

AP Appeal Factors

  • Ability diverse

  • Culturally diverse

  • LGBTQIA diverse

  • Religiously diverse

For future reference, BadgerLink has added some training guides to help you find fiction books with diverse characters! Find these materials and more on the BadgerLink Training page: https://badgerlink.dpi.wi.gov/training.

Finding Book Reviews

Once you find book titles, you may want to read a book review to determine if the book is appropriate for your collection.

BadgerLink has put together a video tutorial to walk you through how to search for book reviews!

Find book reviews published in School Library Journal, Kirkus, and other popular publications

You can find the video on the BadgerLink YouTube playlist or on the Training page. Here is a direct link to the Finding Book Review video.

Other Resources

Here are a couple other recommended online resources to explore.

Cooperative Children’s Book Center

The Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) is a unique examination, study and research library of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is committed to identifying excellent literature for children and adolescents. The CCBC is well known for their Annual Statistics on Multicultural Literature in Publishing, which provides statistics on authors and illustrators of children’s books that are by or about people of color and first/native nations published in the United States.
 

We Need Diverse Books

We Need Diverse Books™ is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and a grassroots organization of children’s book lovers that advocates essential changes in the publishing industry to produce and promote literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people.
 

Social Justice Books

SocialJusticeBooks.org is a project of Teaching for Change, a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide teachers and parents with the tools to create schools where students learn to read, write and change the world. Social Justice Books offers more than 50 book lists, book reviews, and recommend articles on multicultural children’s literature.

Locating Magazines in BadgerLink

Thursday, October 5, 2017

The BadgerLink team released two new training videos, Locating Magazines & Searching for Articles Parts 1 & 2.

Part 1 video image

Part 2 video image

Learn the ins and outs of using our Popular Magazine title list, MasterFILE Premier, or advanced techniques when searching across multiple databases.

If you’ve ever been curious about using the licensed content from BadgerLink to find activities for kids in Highlights, brush up on financial literacy with Money, or stay healthy with Yoga Journal, view these short videos today!

Locating Magazines & Searching for Articles Part 1 and Locating Magazines & Searching for Articles Part 2 are available on the BadgerLink website or our YouTube playlist.

Contact us if you have any questions!

BadgerLink Resources and Training Materials for Educators

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

BadgerLink has quality online resources for everyone in Wisconsin. It's well known that we have a lot of great materials for students. But we also provide tons of great resources for educators!

From the BadgerLink homepage, you can browse our resources by format, subject, or audience. When you select "Educator" under Audience, you get a listing of all the great resources that are relevant to teachers. BadgerLink Resources Filtered by Audience: Educator

We have:

Find Training: Videos, Websites, and PDFs

We also provide a variety of training materials so you know how to use our resources. There are two ways to find training materials. See the instructions as a PDF.

One way to find training materials is to go to our Training page. You can get to the page from the blue navigation bar at the top of the page. Once on the Training page, use the filters to find the materials you need.

On the BadgerLink training page you’ll find:

  • The BadgerLink Set Up Guide, which is a handbook for school and library staff to learn the system requirements and basic guidelines for use of BadgerLink resources
  • Fliers detailing how to use Google Classroom with LitFinder, EBSCO, and TeachingBooks.net resources
  • A video on how to set up an educator account with Britannica 
  • A video and instructions on how to search for lesson plans in EBSCO resources
  • And so much more!

The other way to find training materials is to go to the resource's Full Details & Training page (Example: Science Reference Center Full Details & Training page). First, find a resource you want training on. On the resource listing, click on "Read more..." Then click on "Full Details & Training." Once on the Full Details & Training page, scroll down to find the training materials for the resource.

For Educators Materials

Screenshot showing the For Educators section of the page that you can see when you click on Read more...Some of our resources have lesson plans or other documents that help you use the resource in the classroom.

If a resource has any supporting documents, Click on Read more... and check out the links in the For Educators section. You can also find the links on the Full Details & Training page!

Introduction for Educators Video

To help educators (and librarians!) become familiar with BadgerLink, we put together this short video.

You can also view the video on the BadgerLink Training page.

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