The first challenge (after figuring out what my library card password was) was to go to World Book Kids and search for information on a mammal. I searched for groundhogs. Here is a picture of a groundhog, more commonly known as a woodchuck.Woodchucks are mainly found in Canada and Northeastern United States. They live in dens or burrows. A video with the answer to the age old question 'How much wood could a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?' was included.
Then I searched Groundhog in the World Book Student. There were 4 encyclopedia articles, up from 2 in the Kids. Of the 4, only one was about the mammal called a groundhog. I find it interesting that both the Kids and Student World Book had an entry about Bill Murray under the search for Groundhog. The Student edition also had a cute video and a link to a magazine article where I found that Punxsutawney Phil is correct less than half the time.
As a student, I would have a difficult time writing much of a scientific report on groundhogs from the information in these 2 sources.
The next source I checked was World Book Advanced, where I searched for Ireland. There were 849 items. The left column had 16 subcategories. When I clicked on each of these, the list of items in the category came up on the right. There is an option to 'save to my research.' Back in my youth, we would put a slip of paper, a pencil or our fingers to mark a section that we might want to go back to when doing research. I think I like this.
In World Book Discover I needed to find American government. The topics have photos by them to help students or patrons who are English reading challenged. There is a language translator toolbar to change the language of the printed text and a read aloud feature that allows the reader to listen as they follow along the highlighted text.
When looking up my groundhog again in World Book Public Online for Kids, it had the same information as the World Book Student but also had the read aloud feature, text language translator, and definition option.
In the Online Public Libraries Info Finder I found a link to the Rapid City Journal. Unfortunately I am easily distracted when exploring. The information on Mr. Groundhog looked identical to that on the World Book Student.
The information on Ireland was the same in World Book Advanced and World Book Online Reference.
I found a picture of Marmota americana in the Spanish Language encyclopedia. It looked like it had the same information as the English articles about my groundhog. It even included that sentence on Groundhog's Day.
Looks like I'm out of room. Until next time. Lynda
Hi, Lynda! You are right--the articles are the same for the public and school edition different age groups. The Student & InfoFinder articles are the equivalent to the articles in the print edition, only more up-to-date if something new has happened on your topic. Please note that ALL World Books have the read-aloud, translate, and dictionary features, and the articles have Lexile readibility measures listed. If you clicked into the Ireland article, did you notice the audio for the national anthem? As you discovered, there are a lot of ways to go in World Book! Thanks for your post.
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