For Future Reference

Facts On File's Bloom's Literary Reference Online was recently beefed up with more than 800 new critical essays, a new dictionary tool with more than 34,000 entries, and a host of new videos taken from an in-depth interview with literary critic Harold Bloom. ABC-CLIO also updated its History Reference Online by adding several new print reference titles to its already impressive repertoire of award-winning history reference content.

Gale has redesigned the interface of its Biography Resource Center (one of my personal favorites!) and added lots of new content, including a Lives & Perspectives Collection module that features nearly 160,000 biographies and content from nearly 40 recently published print titles. And be sure to check out this new update by Gale: the Text-to-Speech option allows users to listen to text from any of their databases as it is read aloud, and audio segments can even be saved as MP3 files for future use.

Marquis Who's Who continues this year's generosity trend with the introduction of the Artists' Gallery, a web-based database featuring works of art from hundreds of popular artists and available to the public free of charge. With content taken from the Who's Who in American Art print title, the gallery can be browsed by artist name or media type. Entries provide such artist information as public and commissioned works, honors and awards, education, and exhibit listings. Check it out at www.whoswhogallery.com.

Here's a new one: Gale and the Associated Press have teamed up to produce a new database called AP Interactives. Text, photographs, other still images, audio, video, and even animated graphics provide multimedia information on all kinds of topics, from popular historical and current events to science and natural disasters and even entertainment news. Content is searchable and browseable, and hot links enable users to specify formats—and browse related material—on their topics of choice.

NoveList Plus is the talk of the town, at least in the stacks. Nonfiction gets a long-deserved salute in readers' advisory with this new database by EBSCO. In addition to the wealth of content found in NoveList, NoveList Plus also contains more than 60,000 nonfiction titles handpicked by NoveList staff for their appeal to general readers. Since users get all the bells and whistles found in the fiction-only version, readers can explore nonfiction titles through awards lists, discussion guides, and, of course, the ever fun advanced searching tool for wanted subjects, including Adventure, Arts & Entertainment, Biography & Memoir, and Current Events & Politics. And, of course, there is that cool, new interface.