Founded in 1944, EBSCO provides a way to connect to the information needed from a trustworthy source. It has maintained this reputation from its inception and is currently the world's leading provider of research information. It provides just about any kind of resource imaginable, including e-journals and e-books. School libraries can subscribe to various EBSCO databases, such as Kidsearch, Searchasaurus and Student Research Center, designed for both primary and secondary school students.
ProQuest is another research database that is highly respected among academic circles. It holds over 4,500 titles, created from 1971 to the present, of which over 3,200 are full-text documents. Sources are a mix of scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines and newspapers. ProQuest's research library covers subjects in the top 150 core academic areas. To simplify searching, ProQuest narrows these subject areas down to 15 manageable subject-specific modules. It offers various programs designed for students, such as SIRS Discoverer for elementary and middle school students and ProQuest Central for high school students, as well as subject-specific e-libraries for history and literature.
This research database is the result of the efforts of one individual. The creator, Bob Drudge, was a family therapist and clinically trained social worker who sought to create an online reference database that could be accessed quickly and easy to navigate and provide comprehensive content. Since 1995, RefDesk has been a "free and family friendly web site that indexes and reviews quality, credible and current web-based resources."
Dr. R. Gerry Adams developed an Internet library database in 1995. Federal funds were obtained to sponsor a site so that the private database could be accessed online by the general public. In May of 1997, the Evaluation and Development Institute became co-owner of the database and offered it through the web portal named "Awesome Library." It includes only child-safe links and can be used by teachers, students, parents or librarians. Awesome Library also includes lesson plans for teachers and contains 37,000 carefully reviewed Web resources, including the top five percent used in education.