Lesson 3 - SIRS

    SIRS Discoverer:
SIRS Discoverer is a great resource for kids who need information that wouldn't necessarily be found in World Book or in ordinary library materials. I can see this being very useful for all sorts of research projects for kids, especially ones who are a little older, and need a little more in depth information.
The Advanced Search option is definitely helpful too, if you're trying to specify a reading level or an exact article. For the third grader looking up information on the solar system, I could pull up a variety of articles from some wonderful sources, and organize them according to the child's reading level. And there's a handy link for if the user wants to review the information later, to simply send the article to the user's email address. Love that!
To come up with pictures and maps of volcanoes, I simply used the search box. "Volcano" brought up almost 1,000 articles, most of which had pictures and maps attached. A more roundabout way was to go to the science section, then choose articles on geology/geography, and then select volcanoes. That brought up a more specified range of articles, less than 200. Using the "Pictures" or "Maps of the World" choices also brought up plenty of material to choose from. I almost wish that I was doing a science report; there's just so much to choose from!

     SIRS Issues Researcher:
SIRS Issues Researcher is a very professional site, that would be great for a lot of modern events researching. I can see this site being helpful both to patrons and to me for my own personal use.
For the committee of teachers looking for websites and articles on suicide prevention for teens, I found it simple enough to pull up numerous articles on the subject. What I really liked was that as I started clicking on tags, I was able to refine my search to a few specific subject tags. SIRS would be helpful for the teachers not only because it has such great searching and refining tools, but it is a very professional site with very professional articles that can be trusted to lead you to exactly what you are looking for.
If I needed to find accurate information on water conservation and its pros and cons, I could easily find various articles to suite the purpose by clicking on the "Water Use" group in the leading issues list, or by just using the search box to look up "water conservation".  There is so much information available through this site; I'm very glad to be reminded.