Databases for Research in Children's Literature

The Children's Literature Comprehensive Database (CLCD) is an acquisition, research, and reference service that offers a wide range of information on children's literature. The database allows users to search for titles by genre, age, grade, topic, author, illustrator, and other categories. It contains more than 200,000 reviews of children's books--all full text searchable from 33 review sources. Also available are entries for more than 339,000 awards, prizes, best book list and reading list entries; when you search for and find books, you will see what awards the books have won and what lists they have made. The database provides access to over 30,000 book jacket images and offers a set of over 60,000 links to web pages featuring individual authors or illustrators. The CLCD includes Teaching Tools--which includes lesson plans and teaching guides, as well as information provided by various Reading Measurement Programs such as Accelerated Reader, Degrees of Reading Power, Lexile and Reading Counts.

From the Children's Literature web site, click on "Database Services" in the top blue bar, and then select "CLCD Children's Literature Comprehensive Database." From the next screen, select the "begin searching" link. You have now arrived at the CLCD search screen. From this web page, you may search for children's literature by entering book titles, author names, or book topics into the search box at the top of the screen. You can also search for books by a variety of other topics, including category (fiction and non- fiction), genre, age, or grade by using the menu selections on the search page.

Additional instructions (from the Children's Literature website):

Access to the records within this database is provided via two separate information retrieval mechanisms, a Search page and a Browse page:

• The Search page allows you to perform full text searches of the bibliographic data and book reviews within the database.
• The Browse page provides you with the ability to create several types of browse lists that also can be used to access records in the database.

To learn more about specific search/display procedures, click here. However, if you are just starting to experiment with this database, we suggest that you begin by stepping through the tutorials. By following the tutorials, you will quickly become proficient in this new information retrieval service.

This database of award-winning children's literature can be searched by a number of useful categories, such as the gender of the protagonist, the age of the reader, and the book's setting or genre.

Another useful database for gathering research is Library Literature. After opening up the link, click on the small box in front of "Library Lit & Inf Full Text". As with any database, the key is finding the right terms for the topic you have selected. This database uses "Children's Literature" and "Young Adult Literature" as subjects.

• To combine multiple terms in Library Literature, use multiple search boxes. For example, if you wanted to search for articles about multiculturalism in children's literature, type "children's literature" as a subject on the first line and "multiculturalism" as a subject on the second. When you hit Start, Library Lit will search simultaneously for articles that include both terms.
• An advantage of Library Lit is that many articles are available in full text by clicking on one of the icons in front of the citation. Users can also email articles to themselves by following the Print Email Save link on the left-hand menu bar.

ERIC is an electronic database for articles and documents in education. It includes many citations for articles about children's and young adult literature. Here are some tips to get you started.

• ERIC has a feature called Map Term to Subject Heading. This helps users match the term they enter to the term that ERIC uses. For example, if you type "Young Adult Literature" into the search box and click on Perform Search, ERIC will return a list of related terms. This allows the user to choose the best match. In this instance, the best match for "Young Adult Literature" would be "Adolescent Literature". Click on the box in front of the term you want to search and hit Continue. ERIC will return to the main search page and the number of matches will appear in the Search History.
• ERIC allows users to combine multiple terms together. For example, if you wanted to search for articles that discuss homosexuality in young adult literature, you can combine a search for "Adolescent Literature" (see above) with a search for "Homosexuality". To do this, search for each term individually. When the results of both searches are listed in the Search History box, click on the Combine icon (the overlapping circles) on the top menu. Click on the boxes in front of the terms you wish to combine then click on Continue. ERIC will add a line to the Search History indicating how many articles are available about both "Adolescent Literature" and "Homosexuality".
• To display the results of your search, click on Display. The citations will appear in a list. You can email the search results to yourself as a list of citations. To do this, scroll down to the Citation Manager, choose Selected Citations, then click on the Email button.
• To read an abstract for a particular article, click on Abstract or Complete Reference. To check if the UIUC Library owns the item, click on Library Holdings. Very few articles are available in full-text through the ERIC database so in most cases, you will have to find the print source in the library.
• Note that there are two types of documents cited in the ERIC database - journal articles and ERIC documents. Journal articles are identified by an accession number (AN) that begins withe EJ. These are articles published in scholarly or professional journals. ERIC documents are identified by an ED accession number. ERIC documents are generally unpublished reports/speeches/conference proceedings/projects that have been collected by ERIC. Many ERIC documents are available electronically - if this is the case, there will be a full text link under the citation. ERIC documents that are not available electronically are available on microfiche in the Education Library. To access a microfiche, write down the six digit accession number (e.g. ED346354).

Like ERIC, this database indexes many leading journals in education. Although it is not quite as comprehensive as ERIC, the content is more up-to-date, and many articles are available in full-text. Helpful database subject headings for conducting your search include

• Children's literature
• Picture books for children
• Young adults' literature

Please note that you can search Library Literature at the same time you are searching Education Full Text by checking both database names in the area above the search boxes.

NoveList includes reading lists, articles, and book and author information for a broad range of fiction, including children's and young adult. Book records include full-text reviews for adult, young adult, children's and easy fiction titles from several journals, including: Booklist, School Library Journal, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. Search limiters allow you to find titles and authors for particular reading levels and lexile ratings.

The Features for Teachers section (accessed via the title bar under the NoveList logo) is a portal to NoveList's children's and YA literature content for educators. Included are book talks, class activities, picture book extenders, and standards-based thematic units.