Friday, October 3, 2008

An Invaluable Resource!

Are you taking advantage of the online resources that the Ocean County Library offers? Did you know that your library card allows you to access hundreds of reference books, educational worksheets and academic articles from your home computer?

You can find these resources on the “Find It” page by going to OCL’s Web site: www.theoceancountylibrary.org and double clicking on “Research and Info”. Once you are on the “Find It” page, you will find a list of topics on the left side—click on the topic of interest to find a description of the resources available in that area. For example, by clicking on “Education and Careers”, you can access thousands of scholarly articles in “Academic Search Premier”, hundreds of printable educational worksheets in the “Curriculum Resource Center” and hundreds of encyclopedias, almanacs and reference books on a wide variety of topics in the “Gale Virtual Reference Library”. Once you click on the title of the database, you will be asked to input your library card.

But why should you use these databases when it is so easy to find information on the Internet? The databases available through Ocean County Library will give you much better, more reliable information than any commercial search engine, without advertisements cluttering the page. To subscribe to these databases on your own would cost you thousands and thousands of dollars, but your tax dollars are already paying for the county subscription through the library. Take advantage of these resources today!

If anyone would like to attend a workshop on using these databases, there will be a special training session at the Toms River Branch on Thursday, October 23rd at 2 pm: The Library 24/7 At Your Home! Come and learn how to use the library databases; it’s like having a complete reference library at your fingertips at home, and it’s free! This particular workshop will be aimed at parents who are home schooling their children.
For ages 12 and up. Limit 20. Registration is required. Click on the live link above to register online or call 732-349-6200 to register by phone.

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