Junior Reference Collection

What's included in the Junior Reference Collection?

The Junior Reference Collection features the text of several reference books aimed at the middle school grade levels, including U*X*L Biographies, U*X*L Science, the Junior Worldmark Encyclopedias, and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate, Biographical, and Geographical Dictionaries.

The Junior Reference Collection includes 8,000 essays, over 8,500 photographs and illustrations, over 5,000 Timeline Events, audio and video files, 3,000 biographies, and 3,000 topic overviews.

How to Search

From the home page of the Junior Reference Collection, there are several ways to search:

1. Search Boxes

Enter a search term in the white box at the type of the page. "Search by Subject" is the default choice that appears. Change "Search by Subject" (by clicking on the triangle to the right of the box) to "Search by Keyword." It will search the entire database for the word entered.

2. Search by Category

Author Search - Search biographies of famous authors by entering the name of an author, or identifying an author that matches specific criteria.

For example, to find a biographies of Hispanic American authors born after 1950, use the following search terms:

Gender: Any
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: Hispanic American
Birth Year: is after 1950 A.D.

and click Search.

Book - To find author biographies and plot summaries of books, enter as much as you know of the title of the book and/or the author of a book.

Multimedia Gallery - Search the gallery to find audio files, images, movies, and maps.

Person - There are two ways to search for people.

Enter a name to find information about a specific person, or

Enter any combination of criteria (such as nationality, ethnicity, year of birth and/or death, etc.) to identify a person.

For example, to search for biographies of female African American inventors, use the following search terms:

Occupation: Inventor
Ethnicity: African American
Gender: Female

and click Search.

Places - Select a place from the box, or type in the name of a place to find entries in the Junior Reference Center that mention that place.

Dictionary - Enter the word you are looking for, and choose one of the three dictionaries listed to search.

Timeline - Scroll along the timeline and click on the time periods, enter specific years, or enter text for any events you are trying to find.

Advanced - Advanced searching lets you combine different search criteria to widen or narrow your search, or to limit your search to a certain type of document.

How to View and Print Results

After you click on search, you will be presented with a list of results that match your search.

If your search retrieves more than one type of file, tabs along the top of the list will allow you to toggle between reference (text) entries and multimedia files.

Click on the title of the entry (underlined and in blue) to display the entry. To go back to the list of entries found, click on the blue Current Results bar on the left side of the screen.

Printing

To print an article, click on the Print icon on the screen (this will format the article for printing). Then click on the web browser's Print button at the top of the screen (or go to the File menu and select Print, or press Ctrl+P). Click the browser's Back button to go back to the entry.

E-Mailing

To e-mail a record to yourself, click on the E-Mail icon. Then enter your e-mail address, the format for the message, and click Send. Click the browser's Back button twice to go back to the entry, or click any of the icons on the screen to start a new search.

To start a new search in Junior Reference Center, click on Home near the top left hand corner of the screen.

To access other Gale databases, click Gale Group Databases at the top right hand corner of the screen.

Citing Articles

Articles retrieved from Junior Reference Center will have a citation to the source at the end of the article. For more information about citing sources found in Gale databases, see Citing Infotrac and GaleNet Sources.

Remote Access

This database is available outside of the library via remote access. Follow these instructions to set up your browser for remote access.

Start searching the Junior Reference Collection.

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