The following services and databases were acquired with the project grant funds:

Services

• Discovery Service for SLED

• OCLC Proxy Server

Databases

• Oxford Reference Premium

• Heritage Quest 

• Automotive Repair 

• BrainPop

• TERC

• EBSCO Small Engine Repair

• Gale Student Resources in Context

With the discovery search service on SLED, users can retrieve over 200 million records covering a myriad of subjects including medicine, engineering,business, art, philosophy, history, and education.  The materials also span different audiences,from elementary school students looking for picture books through college students doing research on scientific topics or adults seeking recommendations for novels to read.   SLED also provides comprehensive retrieval in that contemporary as well as historical resources are delivered in the same search.  For example, Alaska’s Digital Archives presents a wealth of historical photographs, albums, oral histories,moving images, maps, documents, physical objects, and other materials from libraries, museums, and archives throughout the state.  One of the more recent additions to SLED isScholarWorks@UA, the University of Alaska's Institutional Repository created to share research and works by UA faculty, students, and staff.  Graduate theses, both master’s and doctoral,along with white papers and research reports from the various research institutes of the university are among the types of sources found inScholarWorks@UA, and thus available through SLED.

While anyone, anywhere, can search SLED only the residents of Alaska have access to the commercially produced publications like scholarly journals, newspapers, and magazines that have been licensed for SLED. With additional funding support from the University of Alaska, the Alaska State Library, and the state of Alaska, SLED delivers information at the cost of $1.08 per resident per year.

SLED offers many services and provides access to an expanding collection of resources. Here are just a few:

• Educational videos for school children.

• Websites to learn a foreign language.

• Access to a wealth of digital images documenting Alaska’s history and culture.

• Online tutoring services for elementary through intro-level college students.

• Test preparation for high school equivalency, college entrance tests, graduate schools, professional school entrance tests, or civil service exams.

• Online reference books from Oxford University Press.

• Do-it-yourself guides for auto and small engine repair, crafts, and home improvements.

• Genealogy resources for researching family ancestry.

In addition, the SLED discovery service will access the high-quality websites selected by the SLED volunteers that are included in the topical research guides.  These guides, produced by librarians in Alaska as well as other colleges and universities in the U.S.,are fully indexed and findable on SLED.   

The ALN Director coordinated the acquisition of books for the Alaska Digital Library (through Overdrive).

Monthly carts of $500 each were selected and purchased in the areas of

• Non-Fiction

• Children & Young Adult

• Fiction (Romance, Western, Historical Fiction, Literature, etc.)

• Fiction (Mystery, Horror, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, etc.)

Weekly carts of $500 were purchased to maintain a healthy holds queue.

Special purchases were made for statewide reading programs, the Battle of the Books, and for always accessible audiobooks.

See ADLpolicies.pdf for specific details of process.

Finally, a role of ALN and SLED volunteers is to evaluate existing resources for their effectiveness. During February and March the team reviewed the existing Testing and Education Reference Center (TERC) which has had diminishing usage. A comparable product was reviewed, Learning Express. Learning Express will be the new "testing" resource for the next fiscal year. An example of the evaluation process for Learning Express can be found in the SLEDeval.pdf found in Additional Materials.