Challenge 5: Gale Virtual Reference Library

It's fun to look forward to spring when it's snowing!  Searching for spring festivals makes winter seem shorter. 

I did a basic search for Spring Festivals and had 444 results.  The best ones were from a few specific sources:  Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of World Holidays and Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of World Cultures.  So went to those two resources, did my search again, and found a lot of information.

One of my new favorite spring festivals will be St. David's Day, celebrated in Wales on March 1.  Daffodils are everywhere for this festival and I love daffodils!  They just seem to shout, "It's Spring!"  I carried daffodils in my wedding bouquet, and have planted them around my house.  I don't think mine will be blooming by St. David's Day, so I will have to buy a bunch or two to celebrate.

But back to my search....  I did find some information on activities and food for various festivals in these two encyclopedias.  Another source for food and recipes is the Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of Foods and Recipes of the World.

I think this civic organization will find too many ideas for a single event.  By using the Gale Virtual Reference Library, they can make "Spring Holidays Around the World" an on-going activity!

Both the Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of World Cultures and Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of Foods and Recipes of the World are 2012 titles.  I actually did not use the Advanced Search to find them:  I went to the Title List and had titles listed by publication date (descending):  new titles are listed first.  There were a total of nine titles listed for 2012.

Then I did an Advanced Search and limited the results by Publication Year (within 2012).  There were 28,952 hits.  Are these 28,952 results separate articles from the nine 2012 titles?  When I look on the left side of the results page, I have the option to limit my search by publication title, and there are the same nine titles listed....

This has been an interesting database to search - it's been easy to get distracted from the topic at hand and go off on other research paths.  Speaking of distractions, perhaps I should go out and buy those daffodils...!