American Reference Books Annual

The following review of the Children's Literature Comprehensive Database was featured on ARBAonline in June 2002 and will appear in Volume 34 of American Reference Books Annual (March 2003).

Children's Literature Comprehensive Database. http://www.childrenslit.com. [Website]. Bethesda, Md., CLCD Company LLC. $249.95/year (for 1st subscription); $200.00/year (for 2d subscription); $150.00/year (for 3d subscription); $100.00/year (for 4th and subsequent subscriptions). Date reviewed: Mar 2002.

The Children's Literature Comprehensive Database (CLCD) is an extensive resource to 600,000 MARC records and more than 70,000 reviews of children's books. Recently, the publisher has begun incorporating information on prizes and awards that the books have won. For example, users can access data on the 2002 winners of the Pura Belpré, Batchelder, Caldecott, Coretta Scott King, Newbery, Michael L. Printz, and Robert F. Sibert Awards. With the database being updated on a monthly basis, subscribers will have up-to-date access to the most recent reviews of children's books, including recent American Library Association award winners.

Users can search for and access the reviews and MARC records in several different ways. Naturally, a basic word search function is provided. But users can refine their searches to locate words or phrases within entry titles for fiction or nonfiction (or both) works and for works from one or more genres (atlases, biography, dictionaries, encyclopedias, folklore, horror, poetry, sports, fantasy, historical fiction, mystery, and science fiction). Word qualifiers can also be used to help narrow search fields. For example, the database can search for singular and plural forms, word variants, the exact word or phrase, all of the words, or any of the words. Further, users can designate specific fields to be searched: "Author," "Title," "Subject," "ISBN," "Annotation," "Review," or "Reviewer." A full text search capability is also available along with other qualifiers, such as age group, language, author/illustrator, publisher, and publication date. Works in English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese are included.

The "CATSearch" feature allows users to browse for words or phrases within a specific category: "Author (Last Name First)," "Reviewer (First Name First)," "Subject," "LC Classification," "Dewey Classification," and "Text Words." From the search results list users can select one or more items to view. The items selected can be saved to a separate list and viewed when the user chooses. Users can also choose a specific number of records to be viewed at a time and they can sort them by year of publication, author, title, language, or Dewey or LC classification in ascending or descending order. Selected items can be downloaded in brief, full, or MARC format and custom reports can be created in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) or text format. Entries contain cataloging data; a list of awards, honors, or prizes won with links to other winner's entries; and a link to view the book's MARC record. This database is extremely useful for elementary teachers and librarians and public librarians who work with juvenile collections. — Cari Ringelheim