BIG OLD VENDORS

The three reference resources that you are taking a look at are unique "databases" that are produced and marketed by big old commerical vendors. They organize the information and sell them largely to libraries. CQ Researcher produced by Congressional Quarterly has been around in print form ( and of course still is ) for a very long time. It has long been a staple of small college and public libraries. This vendor has recently come out with another product entitled CQ Global Researcher which has a slightly different focus. This database searches for information in only these products (which is essentially a periodical as it comes out many times during the year). It does not search for books or for articles in other periodicals. Issues & Controversies is an example of a "multi-purpose" database in that it offers not only "featured articles" but it contains an encyclopedia and an almanac as well as other kinds of "tools" as well as news links. It is produced by large vendor, Facts.com . The third database you will look at is Gale Virtual Reference Library. This is probably one of finest interfaces I have seen in an online product. It is produced by a very , very large company, the Gale company now Gale Centage Learning. This database is actually a collection of supersized "e-books." These are encyclopedia or encyclopedia like books in which you search for actual articles within these encyclopedias. MCTC Library does own a number of these titles also in print form. Be aware that this product contains about 150 titles while the MCTC Library print collection contains over 800 encyclopedia titles. To locate these additional titles at MCTC you would have to search the library book catalog (they are books!).