Canadian Reference Centre (
CRC) is
the news resource for Canadian magazines, newspapers, reference books, and newswires. All publications considered, it is the largest collection of full-text content available to Canadian libraries, and includes leading Canadian and international periodicals; reference books; over 66,000 biographies and an image collection of over 500,000 photos, maps and flags (more than 86,000 of which are pulled from the Canadian Press...)
In a word? Wow.
Maps and flags aside,
CRC is aimed primarily at an adult clientèle (based on reading levels and subject content.) It includes full-text subscriptions to the following common (and not-so-common...) Canadian newspapers and magazines:
- The Beaver (now called Canada's History)
- Canadian Business
- Canadian Economic Observer
- Canadian Geographic
- Canadian Living
- Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ)
- Chatelaine
- Elle Canada
- Flare
- Food in Canada
- Harrowsmith Country Life
- Maclean's
- Ontario Out of Doors
- The Guelph Mercury
- The Hamilton Spectator
- The (Kitchener) Record
- The Toronto Star
CRC also includes full-text from a number of leading Canadian reference materials:
- Canadian Global Almanac
- Gage Canadian Dictionary
- Gage Canadian Thesaurus
And not to be forgotten,
CRC is also home to a number of full-text transcripts from some of your favourite news shows:
- CBC radio
- 20/20
- 60 Minutes
- 48 Hours
Like I said... Wow! In fact,
Canadian Reference Centre is thought to be so valuable, when Knowledge Ontario suggested they might drop it from their roster it was quickly picked up and supported by the CELPLO consortia, which is how we currently subscribe to it. Three cheers for CELPLO--hip hip hooray!
Much like
Business Source Premier,
CRC is an EBSCO product so you may already recognize many of the e-Resource interface features we commonly look for (click image to enlarge):
- Advanced search
- Full text limit
- Publication search tab
- Subject search tab
- Image search tab
- Folder/log-in option
- Help
Hidden Gem? CRC is one of only a few EBSCO databases to offer SmartText searching. SmartText allows you to copy and paste chunks of text (up to 5000 characters including spaces) to search for related material. You can choose to either type text into the Find field or copy and paste it from an article (or another source.) Then select any other limiters or expanders, and click Search. SmartText Searching uses citation abstracts and article titles to return lists of relevant results.
Simply put: SmartText is a great way of expanding your search to find more relevant material quickly!
What type of information question might you use Canadian Reference Centre to answer?
- I'm looking for newspaper articles on the rising cost of housing across Canada...
- What does the flag of Monaco look like?
- What is the mortality rate of homeless women in Canada?
- Can you find me a picture of the famous hotel, Chateau Lake Louise?
Homework Question: Use
Canadian Reference Centre to answer the question below, emailing your response to training@bpl.on.ca. Answers to these questions can be in point form, but should include all steps taken to complete the query. Please list specific titles of articles (and their publication titles), images, media, etc. pertinent to the question posed. Please also list other e-Resources you could use to support this question.
Question:
Dolores is a frequent customer of the Kilbride public library. She arrives one Saturday morning to tell you her book club is discussing Margaret Atwood’s novel, Payback, and she is in need of a book review (if possible from a Canadian source...) She’d like a copy of the article to take with her to this afternoon’s meeting.
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