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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Marilyn Courtot CLCD Company, LLC (301) 469-2070 1-800-469-2070 marilyn@childrenslit.com 
Bethesda MD - May 1, 2003 - The red, blue and black colors of the search screen are the first indication that there is something new at the Children's Literature Comprehensive Database (CLCD). At the same time, subscribers will notice that it is as easy and reliable as ever. Since its inception, the CLCD Team has been working to add additional review sources and special features on children's books, audio books and videos. As a result, the CLCD provides a single source for any and all information you might want about preK to grade 12 media of all types. The bibliographic record; reviews; awards, honors and prizes; best book lists ; reading measurement programs; state and provincial reading lists; book jacket images; and author/illustrator web references and features are all available in one place, accessible with one search. The most recent addition is the online custom bookstore created for CLCD by Barnes and Noble.com.The database now contains more than 900,000 catalog records in MARC format and the majority have children's headings assigned. There are 130,000 full-text reviews from 24 review sources. These include several international publications, such as Resource Links from Canada, Inis, published by Children's Books Ireland, Lollipops, from Australia. Approximately 1500 new reviews are added monthly. Multiple reviews of a book offer the user a variety of viewpoints from which to assess the suitability of a title for the collection. Unlike many free online databases, the CLCD provides a retrospective of children's books. The reviews from Booklist, KLIATT, KIRKUS and several others go back ten years. As a result, the time spent on researching reviews for censorship issues has been reduced to a minimum. Additionally, students researching the history of children's books are discovering what a treasure trove this is. "Responding to the needs of children's literature professionals and making this their database is my top priority," states Marilyn Courtot, President of the CLCD Company, LLC. "Feedback from our subscribers is invaluable. Many of our decisions concerning enhancements come from the comments we receive." One of the first requests was to include designations for award-winning books. There are now over 200,000 entries for Books of Distinction which include hundreds of national and international book awards, honors and prizes. Thousands of book jacket images are being incorporated into the database as well. Reading measurement programs are important to many of our subscribers. We have Accelerated Reader, Degrees of Reading Power, Lexile and Reading Counts. The Brief Display results have been modified to include the publisher's name. Subscribers can now easily identify large print editions, paperbacks, specialty bound editions, audio books, video recordings as well as the normal trade editions. With the "Saved Checked Items" and the "Sort" features, creating bibliographies and reading lists has been simplified. Selections can be sorted by author, title, year of publication, Dewey or Library of Congress classification or language in ascending or descending order. The resulting list can be placed in a word document, thus giving the user flexibility in creating the final product. The Custom Reports feature of CLCD provides a simple mechanism for preparing bibliographies, reading lists, purchase orders, etc. without having to collect data from multiple sources. Linking to the library WEBPAC is another available feature. Patrons and staff appreciate that not only can they find what materials are available but they can quickly determine which are immediately accessible in their collection. Subscribers whose WEBPACs have agreed to this link will find the symbol on the brief display page. The BROWSE feature allows the user to look at the items in the database as if they were sitting on the shelves. It is in essence a virtual library. "Browse" focuses on retrieving catalog records based on the content of one specific field. This feature is helpful in locating authors with names that are difficult to spell or ones that are very common. A Search for a Subject is appropriate when trying to fill in gaps in the collection or updating a section of the library holdings. The vast majority of bibliographic records are associated with books in English, but there are also more than 150,000 MARC records for books and other media in Spanish, French, German, Russian, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and a variety of other languages. Librarians are very pleased to have this information so readily at hand. CLCD is completely independent of all publishers and does not accept advertising. This ensures that search results are objective because they are returned strictly according to a relevance ranking that is based solely on the user's search criteria. The CLCD database is receiving high marks from subscribers. It is no wonder for it is up-to-date, easy to use, affordable, and provides the information children's literature specialists want and need. It is user-focused in content and user-friendly in its set-up. A subscription to the Children's Literature Comprehensive Database is like having a staff person available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. "We have been hearing about the tremendous number of budget cuts for schools, libraries, and colleges and universities, and what an additional burden this has placed on the staff. We believe that the CLCD is key to continued quality service because of its contents and also its price. The cost is less than one dollar a day," states Courtot. An annual subscription to the CLCD is $275. This provides unlimited searching and use of the database for twelve months. Call for price quotes for campus wide use, school district and library systems, and for remote access for patrons and distance learners. ###
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