Facilities: Libraries

Library Hours
The Main Library (for Middle and Upper School students) is open the following days and hours during the academic year.

- Monday through Thursday: 7:45 am - 4:30 pm
- Friday: 7:45 am - 3:15 pm

The Lower School Library is open the following days and hours during the academic year:

- Monday through Thursday: 7:45 am - 3:30 pm

- Friday: 7:45 am - 3:15 pm

Please note: St. David's libraries close at 3:15 pm on the days before school holidays.

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Library Instruction
Students have flexible access to the libraries throughout the day. Lower School students attend library class once each week to enjoy reading enrichment activities, to learn library skills, and to check out and return library materials. Students in fifth and ninth grade and all new students receive an orientation to the library and its resources at the beginning of the school year. Throughout the year, library staff works with classroom and enrichment teachers to integrate information literacy skills into the curriculum. This ensures a resource based approach which makes learning more meaningful and relevant.

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Library Programs
A number of special programs are sponsored by St. David’s School Libraries, including Children’s Book Week in the fall, the Book Fair in the spring, and coordination of the Summer Reading List. The Accelerated Reader Program is used by students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Author visits and special programs are arranged to foster a love of reading. Through the Birthday Book Club and Dedicated Gift Book Program, the school community donates books in honor or memory of a special teacher, student, or loved one. Library staff also sponsors an Upper School Book Club, a Middle School Book Club and a Student Library Assistant Program for middle and upper school students.

Online Databases
The following online databases are available to St. David's School students, faculty and staff. To access them from home, please obtain the passwords from a member of the library staff.





Ebsco Host Research Databases

• Student Research Center, designed for students in grades 6-12, is graphically rich and easy to use. Along with a topics search, it allows selection of the following resource categories: Magazines; Newspapers; Reference Works & Encyclopedias; Biographies; Radio & TV News Transcripts; Country Reports; State/Province Reports; Primary Source Documents; Photos, Maps & Flags. Links to "Dictionary", "Encyclopedia" and "Teacher Resources" are also available on the search page. Includes Academic Search Elite.
• Searchasaurus and Kids Search, designed for elementary school libraries, includes EBSCO Animals; Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia; and The American Heritage Children's Dictionary, among other sources.
• MagillOnLiterature Plus includes critical analyses, plot summaries, character profiles, and setting information on works by more than 8,500 fiction writers, poets, dramatists, essayists, and philosophers. Biographical records, images, a glossary of literary terms and overview essays on literary genre are included.
• Novelist is a fiction database that helps readers find books to read by subject, read-alikes, series, etc. Picture book extenders and articles on teaching with fiction are helpful teacher resources. Links to websites with information about authors are included.

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Grolier Online
This resource includes access to the following six encyclopedia databases, as well as to magazine articles, world newspapers, web sites, media, an interactive atlas, an educators section and other special features. Two separate search modules, one for older students (Passport) and one for younger students (Kids) are provided.

• Encyclopedia Americana
• Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia
• La Nueva Enciclopedia Cumbre (Spanish encyclopedia)
• Lands and Peoples
• New Book of Knowledge
• New Book of Popular Science

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Grove Art Online New this Year!

An Oxford University Press product, this database is a comprehensive and authoritative resource for research in the history of the visual arts.  Included are 45,000 articles covering all aspects of world art: biographies, art forms, styles, cultures, time periods, images, etc.  Over 3,000 thumbnail art images and lind drawings are included within the text of articles, with links to over 40,000 art images on museum and gallery websites around the world.

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netTrekker d.i. New this Year!

An award-winning educational search engine, this resource offers the best of the web to K-12 students, teacher and parents.  Included are over 180,000 hand-selected, educator-approved sites organized by readability level and aligned with state standards.  Grade level tabs, a read alound feature and a dictionary/translation key to any word on a website allow for differentiated instruction.  An image search provides access to safe images that may be used in classroom presentations.

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Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Online

The OED is recognized as the authority on the evolution of the English language, listing words from across English-speaking world.  The OED gives the meaning, history and pronunciation of words and traces their usage through 2.5 million quotations.  This online verson of the second edition is updated quarterly.

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