It's a Pop World, After All

It's colorful, vibrant, interactive, and difficult to log out of for anyone who loves, lives, studies, or teaches pop culture. As such, it deserves a special mention in LJ's pages, for rarely does a database come along promising not only to inform and keep us up to date but also to entertain and even inspire. These days, pop culture is unapologetically served in high doses (how else do we explain our society's fascination with celebrities not even old enough to vote?); it is for this reason that Greenwood's brand new POP CULTURE UNIVERSE (PCU) database, scheduled for release this summer, promises to deliver a dynamic (and, yes, fun!) research experience.

But make no mistake about the scope of its content, since it reaches far beyond film and music to include subjects as varied as sports, fashion, technology, graphic novels, food, and even politics. Further, make no mistake about the type of content provided here: the thousands of articles that make up PCU were culled from more than 300 volumes from Greenwood's backlist and frontlist—including the 16-volume "American Popular Culture Through History" series—and were fully indexed by a team of librarians and subject specialists. Ultimately, this aims to be a serious product designed for teachers and librarians who use pop culture to engage students in reading, writing, and research. In the words of its creators, it is "a safe haven for researching [pop culture] topics without the bias, advertising, suggestive content, or questionable authorship of commercial or fan sites."

Noteworthy features include "At a Glance" overviews of pop culture from the 1920s to today; hundreds of full-color and black-and-white illustrations; vetted and updated links to outside sources; lesson plans for teachers wanting to use the database in the classroom; frequent updates to subscribers at no extra cost; and, of course, several blogs by authors, editors, and students on the hot topics of the day. For more information, visit www.greenwood.com/PCU and stay tuned for an unpcoming LJ review.