Re: Broadcast News

[Vickye Jean Drury <vdrury@TENET.EDU>]

In response to the question about Broadcast News: it doesn't overlap with
Newsbank, SIRS, or MAS (we don't have InfoTrac) because it consists of
transcripts from four TV networks. But what you have to decide, because
it is not cheap, is how much of the research your students do will be
covered by television news. One of our high schools has it on their
network and loves it. Their students do a lot of current topic research
that is covered by CNN, PBS, ABC, and NPR. But they did purchase some of the
other information databases first (SIRS, MAS, DISCovering Authors, etc)
and have a budget which supports that.  I work at the Professional
Library in our district and am considering the feasibility of buying a
subscription that will circulate for a specific period. That might work
for schools with little money that just need this kind of resource for a
short time. You might consider some version of that idea--it's still just
one user at a time, but better than nothing. It costs$995.00 for the
full-blown program. It is really good, though. This didn't really answer
your question about overall overlapping among databases, though. I
suppose that will just be part of our being discriminating shoppers!