ESL: English as a Second Language

Library databases are searchable collections of magazine and newspaper articles.  The articles were originally published on paper, and often can't be found for free on the Internet. The Library pays so that you can access them.

You can search these databases to find articles about your topic that are also at your reading level. Use "advanced search" to specify which Lexile reading level you need.

	Primary Search Search more than 60 popular magazines at an elementary school reading level. Users may limit searches to articles within a certain range of Lexile Reading Levels.
	Middle Search Plus Search more than 140 popular magazines at a middle school reading level. Users may limit searches to articles within a certain range of Lexile Reading Levels. Also contains biographies and an Image Collection of photos, maps and flags.
	MAS Ultra - School Edition Search more than 700 popular magazines at a high school reading level. Also contains pamphlets, reference books, biographies and an Image Collection.

Searching Library Databases is Different from Searching Google

In Google you can type almost anything and still get useful articles. But the databases can be more tricky. When you search a database, make sure you use as few words as possible.  Compare this example of a Google search to the same search in a database:

If you don't get enough results, you can try different ways to say the same thing, for example:

Here are some other examples: